On Wed, 2018-01-03 at 22:38 +0100, Marcel Holtmann wrote:
I am in favor of address randomization even while it has limited affect, but at least for background scanning it is useful. However doing this via RTNL is causing a weird layer violation and all sorts of potential races and issues. This needs to be done with full awareness of cfg80211 and thus via nl80211. So iwd should do it. And iwd should just expose an on/off switch for WiFi Privacy.
Hi, TL;DR: the policy of which MAC address to use (and when) is flexible and present in NetworkManager configuration. And it's more then a simple randomize on/off switch. === A smaller reason is, that some people have strong opinions and consider important which bits of the address to scramble (and choose a well known manufacturer OUI)[1]. I personally don't agree with the importance of such considerations, but I'd like NetworkManager to be the first choice for people with this particular need -- regardless of whether this need is real or only perceived. In NM you can configure how the bits are scrambled very flexible. Both while scanning[2] and while being associated[3]. More interesting is, I don't only want to have a random MAC address while scanning, but also while being associated. My permanent MAC address should never ever be reveiled. But a new random MAC address on each new association isn't exactly what you want either, because then I get a new IP address from DHCP each time and have to redo captive portal login. So, I want for each of my Wi-Fi profiles a different, stable MAC address. Actually, for public networks like a hotel, I want to use a stable MAC address for a limited amount of time. The example in [4] show how to do that in NM. ===
That said iwd should cope Ok with the MAC address changing behind its back if it receives the RTNL notification (RTM_NEWLINK) if it isn't connected. It always updates it's copy of the address on a RTM_NEWLINK so the race condition shouldn't be present I suppose.
I would think so too. NM change the MAC address via RTNL only while scanning, early during activation, and late during deactivation. As the wireless daemon does/should not autoactivate the device against NM's wish and NM determines that the device is deactivated only after an event from iwd. Hence, there shouldn't be a race of NM interfering while being connected. The race is only while scanning and iwd should just cope with that. Alternatively/additionally, a SetMacAddress() D-Bus call would avoid any race and allow to leave the decision which address to user to somebody closer to the user. best, Thomas [1] https://tails.boum.org/contribute/design/MAC_address/ [2] "wifi.scan-rand-mac-address" and "wifi.scan-generate-mac-address- mask", see man NetworkManager.conf [3] "wifi.cloned-mac-address" and "wifi.generate-mac-address-mask", see man nm-settings. [4] https://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/tree/exa mples/nm-conf.d/30- anon.conf?id=b936ccd2837199d5851388122c2e44951bf20012
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