Re: keyring manager

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 08:46 -0400, Jon Nettleton wrote:
> On Thu, 2007-03-15 at 08:11 -0400, Dan Williams wrote:
> > On Wed, 2007-03-14 at 23:29 -0700, Cindy wrote:
> > > I'm sure this has been asked before.  Are there any plans to make
> > > Network Manager's use of the keyring optional?  I understand the
> > > security issues, and certainly NM should default to using the keyring.
> > >  But an option to turn it off would, I'm sure, be appreciated by many.
> > 
> > Nope!  As you say, that's a security issue.  Instead you'll be able to
> > "publish" a configuration to system settings so that it's available to
> > everyone on the system (or just you if it's single-user) and therefore
> > available for NetworkManager to use when the computer boots up, not just
> > when you log in.
> 
> Random curiosity.  Waht is the planned mechanism for storing the
> published WEP/WPA keys?  I haven't found any documentation online, other
> than the preferences are getting published in the main gconf repo.

Well, given the fact that the keys have to be available to the system
when there is no possibility of user-interaction for a
password/passphrase, any necessary authentication information (keys,
certificate passphrases, VPN passwords, etc) will be stored unencrypted
in files owned by and r/w only by root, at least in the stock
implementation.  That's about as good as you can get, since if somebody
has root on your box you're pretty much screwed anyway.  That's the
price you pay not sitting in front of the box when you want the network
to come up.

Technically the info-daemon for whatever desktop you're using will be
able to store the keys as it sees fit.

Dan