Wireless WPA key corrupted

[Parent5446]

Binary package hint: network-manager

There was a bug similar to this reported previously, but it seems to have popped up again, except in a more severe case. My wireless internet connection has a WPA2 password (Personal Version). Whenever I enter my passphrase into NetworkManager, it tries to connect for a moment or two, and then pops up with the password dialog box again (meaning it was the wrong password). If I click show password it pops up with some kind of hash of random characters as opposed to the string password. If I reenter the password, the error simply recurs. In other words, if I try and enter my WPA passphrase it turns the passphrase into a jumble of random characters as opposed to just connecting.

I tried fixing it by disabling write access to my keyring for NetworkManager and its applet. However, what happened then was that it did the same exact thing as before, except this time the actual password was in the dialog box, but it still would not connect. I hypothesize that at some point during the connection process, the applet is taking whatever key it is given and hashing it or something. When it has access to the keyring, it writes over the original passphrase with this new hash. If it does not have access, it will still hash the passphrase, but when the dialog box pops up it gives the original passphrase (since it has not been overwritten on the keyring). If I disable WPA on my wireless connection it works fine (even with the ESSID hidden).

I am currently running Ubuntu jaunty (development branch) 9.04 on Linux 2.6.28-8-generic. I am using version 0.7.1~rc3-0ubuntu1 of the network-manager package and the same version for network-manager-gnome. I am also using version 0.6.6-2 of wpasupplicant.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

1. Please attach your complete syslog after reproducing the timeout.
2. please attach your /etc/network/interfaces
3. please attach /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf
4. by coincident, do you have connman installed (dont do that ;))?

[Parent5446 (parent5446)]

I do not have connman installed. So that must not be affecting it. I examined the files you told me to submit, and for some reason in my /etc/network/interfaces file, only the loopback interface is listed. Below is the output of ifconfig -a:

eth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1b:24:99:e4:f3
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
          RX packets:1727 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1727 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:141105 (141.1 KB) TX bytes:141105 (141.1 KB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1c:bf:26:bb:89
          inet addr:192.168.1.45 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::21c:bfff:fe26:bb89/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:176880 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:114442 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:55352430 (55.3 MB) TX bytes:22364003 (22.3 MB)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-1C-BF-26-BB-89-62-38-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

And here is the output of iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth2 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11abg ESSID:"RomeoNet"
          Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:E0:98:FA:4E:C1
          Bit Rate=36 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
          Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=72/100 Signal level:-62 dBm Noise level=-94 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

[Saisree Subramanian (ssrpss)]

I faced the same problem and found that the garbled text was actually the hex equivalent of the ascii passphrase/key. Once I entered the key in hex on my AP (most APs support this), the authentication works fine. So the actual bug seems to be that the key is being stored/transmitted only in hex, which has a quick workaround.

[Øystein Viggen (oysteivi)]

I see this bug on my Eee 901, Ubuntu 9.04 (prerelease) updated from archive.ubuntu.com as of Sun Apr 12 2009 11:57 UTC. Haven't been able to check the workaround described by Saisree Subramanian, as there are more people using this AP, so I'd prefer not to fiddle with it.

Requested files were added by the original submitter, and bug is seen by other users, so changing bug status.

[Øystein Viggen (oysteivi)]

While I did see this problem when trying to connect to the AP at my parents' house, I had no problem connecting to my (WRT54GL w/ openWRT) AP when I got back home. Still works after using seahorse to delete the WPA password and then reentering it.

Unless some update in the past two days fixed it (unlikely) it seems to me this issue only presents itself with certain APs.

(I've previously used Ubuntu 8.04 and 8.10 with the same AP I couldn't get working with jaunty prerelease, and I'm certain it hasn't been reconfigured in the mean time).

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

its true that NM stores an redisplays secrets in hex; however, that should work in general. Maybe you use non ascii characters in the passphrase or something?

[Øystein Viggen (oysteivi)]

In my case, the pass phrase contained lower case a-z characters only.

[Jason Wagner (jcw5002)]

I also ran into this problem today. My password is being hashed/converted to ascii and it does not allow me to connect to the network. Password is also 12 lowercase characters a-z.

[Parent5446 (parent5446)]

In my case the password is 20 or so letters but with both upper and lower cases. For me the problem only happened in Ubuntu 9.04. I recently switched back to 8.10 for other reasons and it was working fine.

[Patrik Nilsson (nipatriknilsson)]

I can confirm this bug in 9.04 and Asus eee 1000hg.

The password I entered was

5a858959ba8a3b082938747cc8c485be2b9c9e14f3bae86f228cf5ae9fba29b

and it was changed to

01940b09ccf336528512eaff6e24f3e143fef0116217015f9a3732984182a3ac

when I checked show password after the connection attempt had failed.

It happens both when having/not having a password for the gnome password manager. I can connect wireless networks without a protection, i.e. library, without problem.

[Rene Leonhardt (rele)]

I can confirm this bug on 9.04 Samsung NC10: WPA2 Personal 63 character password including non-ascii characters to improve security (setting-key: psk, setting-name: 802-11-wireless-security, hidden SSID, infrastructure mode).

It happens most of the time after awakening from hibernation, restart does not help afterwards, neither does editing the password in seahorse.
Shutting down and start again helped.

In addition, it is very sad that text cannot be pasted into the password field of seahorse, especially for such strong passwords.

[AnDy (andlinux)]

I have the same problem. :(
I'm using networkmanager 0.7.0.100 and kernel 2.6.28-14-generic.
Hardware is Intel wlan 4965 card.

[xq19space (tuxlux)]

I can confirm this on 3 new machines; different makes and models.

All passwords are changed to garbled text and numbers, completely different from the original entered password.

Every time I start up any of the notebooks, the results are the same, no connection. Connections manager spins around the little green dots in the panel, then stops and ask for a password that has been entered hundreds of times already. When I check and view the password its been changed to some kind of lengthy mess.

How many more postings on this does it take before this issue will be changed to critical?

[Tony Espy (awe)]

This issue ( passwords garbled ) was resolved in NM 0.8 which is included in Karmic ( 9.10 ). Marking as FixReleased.

[Willem Hobers (whobers)]

I appreciate that this bug is marked as FixReleases for Karmic. Yet, as Karmic gave me other problems, I reverted back to 9.4.
In 9.4 this bug persists.

Is there a way to get this fixed in 9.4?

(Synaptic suggests I should "force version", but that item is greyed out in the menu.)

Thanks!

[Tony Espy (awe)]

This will never be fixed as an official Karmic update as it's too large a change for a SRU. See the following link for more information:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates

There's a chance the new NM stack might be backported to 09.04 and made available in a PPA, however right now it's low on the priority list, as there are issues that need to be addressed in 09.10 first.