Re: Wireless Keys stored unencrypted?

[Darren Albers <dalbers gmail com>]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2011 at 1:08 AM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 17:18 +0530, Ritesh Khadgaray wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jun 18, 2011 at 7:57 AM, Darren Albers <dalbers gmail com> wrote:
>> > While doing some research I noticed that wireless keys are located
>> > unencrypted in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts  It even does this when
>> > I set the wireless to not be a system-connection.   It used to be that
>> > wireless keys were stored in the keyring which seems much safer to me
>> > than storing them locally unencrypted.
>>
>> interesting, I am not an nm developer but this seems to stem from keyfile plugin
>> and relies on file selinux label/permission for protection.
>>
>> I also do not  see an option to not save the password.
>
> Correct, the passwords are not encrypted because there is no user
> available to provide passwords.  The passwords are, however, only
> visible too 'root' and thus should be protected; if your root user is
> compromised you're hosed.  This is also how existing system have worked
> for years, so NM certainly isn't a regression here.
>
> You can also opt to keep your secrets in the user keyring, which is
> accomplished by "secret flags".  For example, if you set 'psk-flags=0x1'
> in the keyfile for a WPA-PSK connection, then NM will ask a user agent
> (like nm-applet) for the password instead of keeping it in /etc.  This
> option is only exposed for 802.1x and LEAP passwords though (via the
> "Always ask for this password" checkbox) because only those password
> types are really personal passwords; a WPA-PSK or WEP key really isn't
> personal.
>
> VPN connections also default to having secrets owned by the user's
> session in a keyring.
>
> Dan
>
>

Thank you Dan!   It sounds like I am incorrect but I used to recall
that if a connection was not a system connection that the key would be
stored in the keyring and that was the default.  Is that not the case
any longer?

Thank you!