OpenWRT firmware for routers
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Felix Fietkau bcbc9b1e89 hostapd: fix hostapd RSN preauthentication PMKSA caching
In 2009 OpenWrt's hostapd config added an "auth_cache" boolean
to be used to address a reported issue #12129 [0] on a forum [1].
The reported issue on the ticket is different that the one
described on the forum. The commit was r33359. This change broke
proper RSN preauthentication [2] [3] [4] expectations on hostapd's
configuration for WPA2 and this in turn disabled PMKSA caching and
Opportunistic Key Caching. This change:

  * Leaves the "auth_cache" to be used only for WPA networks for those
    looking to use this as a workaround to a reported issue but annotates
    a warning over its usage.

  * Separate "auth_cache" from WPA2 RSN preauthentication, leaving
    WPA2 RSN preauthentication to enabled only with "rsn_preauth" with
    the expected and recommended settings.

  * Adds a new WPA2 RSN preauthentication "rsn_preauth_testing" to
    be used when evaluating funcionality for WPA2 RSN preauthentication
    with the expected and recommended settings with the only difference
    so far with what should be enabled by default to disable Opportunistic
    Key Caching.

Disabling the PMKSA cache should mean the STA could not roam off and back
onto the AP that had PMKSA caching disabled and would require a full
authentication cycle. This fixes this for WPA2 networks with
RSN preauthentication enabled.

This change should be applied to AA as well as trunk.

  TL DR;

The issue described on the forum has to do with failure of a STA
being able to try to authenticate again with the AP if it failed
its first try. This may have been an issue with hostapd in 2009
but as per some tests I cannot reproduce this today on a WPA2
network.

The issue described on the ticket alludes to a security issue with the
design of using a Radius server to authenticate to an AP. The issue
vaguely alludes to the circumstances of zapping a user, deleting their
authentication credentials to log in to the network, and that if
RSN preauthentication is enabled with PMKSA caching that the user
that was zapped would still be able to authenticate.

Lets treat these as separate issues.

I cannot reproduce the first issue reported on the forums of not
being able to authenticate anymore on a WPA2 network.

The issue reported on the ticket modified WPA2 RSN preauthentication
by adding two fields to the hostapd configuration if auth_cache
was enabled:

  * disable_pmksa_caching=1
  * okc=0

The first one disables PMKSA authentication cache.
The second one disables Opportunistic Key Caching.

The issue reported on the ticket was fixed by implementing a workaround
in hostapd's configuration. Disabling PMKSA caching breaks proper use
of WPA2 RSN pre authentication. The usage of disable_pmksa_caching=1
prevents hostapd from adding PMKSA entries into its cache when a successful
802.1x authentication occurs. In practice RSN preauthentication would
trigger a STA to perform authentication with other APs on the same SSID,
it would then have its own supplicant PMKSA cache held. If a STA roams
between one AP to another no new authenitcation would need to be performed
as the new AP would already have authenticated the STA. The purpose of the
PMKSA cache on the AP side would be for the AP to use the same PMKID for
a STA when the STA roams off onto another BSSID and later comes back to it.

Disabling Opportunistic Key Caching could help the reported issue
as well but its not the correct place to address this. Opportunistic
Key Caching enables an AP with different interfaces to share the
PMKSA cache. Its a technical enhancement and disabling it would
be useful to let a testing suite properly test for RSN preauthentication
given that otherwise Opportunistic Key Caching would enable an
interface being tested to derive its own derive the PMKSA entry.
In production though okc=1 should be enabled to help with RSN
preauthentication.

The real fix for this particular issue outside of the scope of hostapd's
configuration and it should not be dealt with as a workaround to
its configuration and breaking expected RSN preauthentication and
technical optimizations. Revert this change and enable users to pick
and choose to enable or disable disable_pmksa_caching and okc expecting them
to instead have read clearly more what these do.

As for the core issure ported, the correct place to fix this is to
enable a sort of messaging between the RADIUS server and its peers
so that if caching for authentication is enabled that cache can be
cleared upon user credential updates. Updating a user password
(not just zapping a user) is another possible issue that would need
to be resolved here. Another part of the solution might be to reduce
the cache timing to account for any systematic limitations (RADIUS
server not able to ask peers to clear cache might be
one).

[0] https://dev.openwrt.org/changeset/33359
[1] https://forum.openwrt.org/viewtopic.php?id=19596
[2] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/hostapd#IEEE_802.11i.2FRSN.2FWPA2_pre-authentication
[3] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/wpa_supplicant#RSN_preauthentication
[4] http://wiki.openwrt.org/doc/recipes/rsn_preauthentication

Signed-off-by: Luis R. Rodriguez <mcgrof@do-not-panic.com>

SVN-Revision: 38336
11 years ago
docs docs: update remaining references to functions.sh 12 years ago
include build: extend menu with few ubifs options 11 years ago
package hostapd: fix hostapd RSN preauthentication PMKSA caching 11 years ago
scripts opkg: add support for SHA256 verification 11 years ago
target lantiq: experia v8 fixes 11 years ago
toolchain uClibc: fix scoped-IPv6-addresses in getnameinfo 11 years ago
tools tools: add tool to generate dcs93xl images 11 years ago
.gitattributes add .gitattributes to prevent the git autocrlf option from messing with CRLF/LF in files 12 years ago
.gitignore .gitignore: Ignore Emacs editor generated files 13 years ago
BSDmakefile add missing copyright header 18 years ago
Config.in build: extend menu with few ubifs options 11 years ago
LICENSE finally move buildroot-ng to trunk 8 years ago
Makefile build: it is no longer necessary to call make target/linux/clean as part of make clean 12 years ago
README build: BSD compile fixes 11 years ago
feeds.conf.default feeds.conf.default: switch packages feed to git (#13818) 11 years ago
rules.mk build: include the cpu type as part of the toolchain/target directory name 11 years ago

README

This is the buildsystem for the OpenWrt Linux distribution.

Please use "make menuconfig" to configure your appreciated
configuration for the toolchain and firmware.

You need to have installed gcc, binutils, bzip2, flex, python, perl
make, find, grep, diff, unzip, gawk, getopt, libz-dev and libc headers.

Run "./scripts/feeds update -a" to get all the latest package definitions
defined in feeds.conf / feeds.conf.default respectively
and "./scripts/feeds install -a" to install symlinks of all of them into
package/feeds/.

Use "make menuconfig" to configure your image.

Simply running "make" will build your firmware.
It will download all sources, build the cross-compile toolchain, 
the kernel and all choosen applications.

You can use "scripts/flashing/flash.sh" for remotely updating your embedded
system via tftp.

The OpenWrt system is documented in docs/. You will need a LaTeX distribution
and the tex4ht package to build the documentation. Type "make -C docs/" to build it.

To build your own firmware you need to have access to a Linux, BSD or MacOSX system
(case-sensitive filesystem required). Cygwin will not be supported because of
the lack of case sensitiveness in the file system.


Sunshine!
	Your OpenWrt Project
	http://openwrt.org