WEP problems with ndis and ath drivers

[Kenneth D. Merry]

On Tue, Mar 23, 2004 at 21:55:05 +0800, Sam Leffler wrote:
> On Mar 21, 2004, at 9:35 AM, Kenneth D. Merry wrote:
> 
> >
> >I have a Dell Inspiron 8500 laptop with an onboard TrueMobile 1300
> >(Broadcom, b/g chipset) and a Netgear WAG511 cardbus card (Atheros,  
> >a/b/g
> >chipset).
> >
> >I have a Netgear FWAG114 firewall/access point.  (Atheros based, does  
> >a, b
> >and g.)
> >
> >I'm running FreeBSD-current from Friday, March 19th.  Both cards talk  
> >to
> >the access point under FreeBSD when I'm not running WEP, and neither  
> >card
> >works with WEP enabled.  (i.e., neither card will associate with the  
> >base
> >station with WEP enabled.)
> >
> >I have tried putting the key in as both hex digits and as the  
> >passphrase I
> >used on the router to generate the hex key.  (The router claims it's a  
> >128
> >bit key, but it only generates 26 hex digits, so it's really a 104 bit  
> >key
> >I suppose.)
> >
> >Both cards work under Windows with WEP, with either the hex key or the
> >passphrase entered.
> >
> >I have attached ifconfig and wicontrol output from both cards, and  
> >dmesg
> >output from the laptop.
> >
> >To enable the adapter, I've been doing things like this:
> >
> >ifconfig {ath0|ndis0} ssid [my ssid] wepmode on wepkey `cat wepkey`
> >
> >(where wepkey is a file with the 26 digit hex key, starting with 0x)
> >
> >For what it's worth, I've tried setting the authmode to shared  
> >(instead of
> >"open"), but all I get is the following:
> >
> >ifconfig ath0 authmode shared
> >ifconfig: SIOCS80211: Invalid argument
> >
> >The ath driver spits out the following diagnostics when I try to  
> >associate
> >with either the a or g part of the base station with WEP on:
> >
> >
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:0d:f9
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:0d:f9
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:0d:f9
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:0d:f9
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:2c:5c
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:2c:5c
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:2c:5c
> >ath0: authentication failed (reason 13) for 00:09:5b:66:2c:5c
> >
> >(The first mac address is the a base station, the second is the g base
> >station.)
> >
> >The ndis driver (I'm using the Dell/Broadcom Windows drivers for the
> >onboard chip) doesn't give any error messages, but doesn't associate
> >either.
> >
> >If anyone has any clues on how to get this to work, I'd love to hear  
> >them.
> >(Or if you have a similar setup and have managed to get it to work with
> >WEP, that would be  
> >use<ath0.ifconfig><ath0.wicontrol><ndis0.ifconfig><ndis0.wicontrol><dme 
> >sg.ath_ndis.out>__
> 
> It appears your AP requires shared-key authentication to associate when  
> WEP is enabled.  The current code in the tree does not support  
> shared-key authentication (it's actually a bad idea security-wise).  I  
> have tested shared-key support in a p4 branch but haven't committed it  
> yet.  If you want it you can find it in my sam_sockets branch.

I'll check out the branch, thanks!

I'm a bit confused about shared key authentication as well, though.  My
router basically has a couple of radio buttons on the WEP configuration
page:

Authentication Type:  ( ) Open System  ( ) Shared Key
WEP:                  ( ) Disable      ( ) Enable

They say the following about it:

"Select your Authentication Type:

    * Open System (no authentication or encryption)
    * Shared Key 

"For easy installation, Open System is the default. However, NETGEAR
strongly recommends that you change to Shared Key. If Shared Key is
selected, you need to enable the WEP and enter at least one shared key."

So I've got Shared Key and Enable, respectively, set.

Is there another scheme that's more secure that my router doesn't support?
(Perhaps they've got a firmware upgrade for it.)

Ken
-- 
Kenneth Merry
ken at kdm.org