Zesty: network-manager-applet VPN 17.04 Cisco AnyConnect fails with Duo Authentication

[pureblood]

Since I have updated to Ubuntu Zesty 17.04 I have had problems with connecting through VPN. I did not understand at first what was causing the issue. Now I think I have figured it out and explaining the issue might help other people with the same problem understanding what is going on.

I login to my work VPN network using Cisco AnyConnect (available through package openconnect) and Duo Authentication. Because of Duo Authentication, there are always two passwords to fill in, one is my regular password and the other one is a 6 numeric password generated every few seconds that I need to ascertain from my smartphone. If I click on the option dialogue box "Save passwords", I think the applet manager will save both passwords and the next time I try to connect through VPN it will use both passwords (one of which will be expired) multiple times until my work account will be locked out. By the time the dialogue appears allowing me to include the correct passwords, it seems to be already too late. The login will fail no matter what because now I have been locked out and I could understand what was going on because there was no way for me to know that at that point I had been irrevocably locked out of the ability to VPN.

I do not know if this is a network-manager issue, a network-manager-applet issue, or an openconnect issue, but this is definitely a completely new annoying behaviour resulting from the update to Ubuntu Zesty 17.04.

Also, of notice buy maybe unrelated, if I select in the network-manager-applet "VPN Connections", the option "Configure VPN..." is greyed out and cannot be selected anymore. This is also a new behaviour of Ubuntu Zesty 17.04.