NM should not connect automaticly to unsecured network which was formerly a secure one

[Henning Moll]

Binary package hint: network-manager

First of all, i am not sure whether this is a bug in NM or nm-applet (if at all).

I have an access point using PSK encryption. NetworkManger works as expected. The key has been saved and after every system startup NM automatically established a connection to the encrypted network.

Now it happens that i completley switched of encryption by mistake. After the next reboot, NM established the connection to the unsecured network without any warning. In my opinion this is a security problem. I can think of two scenarios:

* You are allowed to connet to a secured network and trust all other participants on that network. Now, by mistake, the encryption is disabled. You still send confidential data over the network without knowing that anybody can evesdropping.
* Maybe this problem is also usable for an active attack: Is it possible to provide an access point with the same ssid / (MAC?) in a way, that it 'shadows' the proper access point?

Once a connection was established to a encrypted network, there should at least a warning if that encryption no longer exists (changed?).

I was able to reproduce this with Gutsy, ubuntu (nm-applet) as well as kubuntu (knetworkmanager).

[Motin (motin)]

I would definitely vote for this idea! However, since it is more of a feature-request than a bug, our best bet would be if you also reported it to http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com

Please do so to kick off some discussion about it, and be sure to post the url to the idea on Ubuntu Brainstorm back here when it is reported!

Cheers

[Henning Moll (drscott)]

I opened a idea at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10454/

Please feel free to vote.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

this is properly forwarded upstream. do further discussions there please.