IKEv2 offers an optional exchange within IKE_SA_INIT (the initial exchange between peers when establishing a secure tunnel) as a reuslt of an inherent vulnerability in IPsec implementations, as described in RFC 5996.

Two expected attacks against IKE are state and CPU exhaustion, where the target is flooded with session initiation requests from forged IP addresses. These attacks can be made less effective if a responder uses minimal CPU and commits no state to an SA until it knows the initiator can receive packets at the address from which it claims to be sending them.

If the IKE_SA_INIT response includes the cookie notification, the initiator MUST then retry the IKE_SA_INIT request, and include the cookie notification containing the received data as the first payload, and all other payloads unchanged.

Upon detecting that the number of half-open IKEv2 SAs is above the threshold value, the VPN dialup server requires all future SA_INIT requests to include a valid cookie notification payload that the server sends back, in order to preserve CPU and memory resources.

For most devices, the threshold value is set to 500, half of the maximum 1,000 connections.

This feature is enabled by default in FortiOS 5.2.