Bugzilla – Bug 488633
VUL-2: networkmanager silently accepts no encryption
Last modified: 2018-10-30 15:21:19 UTC
The issue is public. The only logical consequence of a known AP dropping encryption is to terminate the connection IMO. There must be no reconnect whatsoever. Date: Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:17:44 +0100 From: Christoph Höger <choeger@cs.tu-berlin.de> To: networkmanager-list@gnome.org Subject: networkmanager should warn if ap changes encryption Hi, there seems to be an issue with some APs and their enryption value[1]. Somehow they 'forget' about the chosen encryption and continue unencrypted. NM will happily accept that change and continue to use that wireless network which leads to the owner not noting the change. To make NM more secure I would argue that NM should notify the user if an AP changes _any_ connection parameter since the last successfull connection. If this takes time to implement, I am willing to work on a patch for that. regards christoph [1] (in german) http://www.heise.de/newsticker/WLAN-wirklich-verschluesselt--/meldung/135021
Tambet, I guess the following scenario describes the request too: - User has a Novell SSID configured (with WPA-EAP) - Eve creates a rogue AP also named Novell but without encryption nm-applet will allow the user to connect to the rogue AP with only one click. If NM would first check if another connection (with better security) exists it might warn about that. At least that's how I interpret this report, reassigning ;)
Ok, so in that case nm-applet creates a new NMConnection for it and successfully connects, so yes, I agree that there should be a warning. I did understand that report differently, I guess the same way as Ludwig did (that an AP would change it's configuration on it's own during an active session).
(In reply to comment #4) > I did > understand that report differently, I guess the same way as Ludwig did (that an > AP would change it's configuration on it's own during an active session). AFAIK, in that case the AP would have to disassociate all clients resulting in NM not reconnecting to it automatically. Everything else would be an AP bug.
What is planned to handle this issue?
It is planned to show a warning/confirmation dialog when a request is made to activate a wifi connection without any security when there's existing configuration with the same SSID and security information.
Since it's not really that urgent to require a immediate update we add this to the list of planned updates (ie for next sp latest).
a warning dialog still does not exist even in NM 0.9. Not actually a vulnerability so leaving open as enhancement.