wpa_supplicant && associates to unknown AP

[Sam Leffler]

Matthias Apitz wrote:
> Hello,
>
> This lonely Sunday morning I've switched on my laptop at home and while
> it was booting I went to breakfast; coming back I found that I could not
> connect to Internet because it associated to a unknown foreign AP in my
> area (ssid ALICE-WLAN). I'm running wpa_supplicant and of course
> this is not in my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file. My AP is ssid tarara
> and the entry in wpa_supplicant.conf is:
>
> network={
>         ssid="tarara"
>         scan_ssid=0
>         key_mgmt=NONE
>         wep_tx_keyidx=0
>         wep_key0=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> }
>
> I killed the wpa_supplicant and restarted it, see below the ifconfig
> output, and it then associated fine to my AP. How is this possible?
> And what can I do to prevent this?
> Thx
>
>
> # ifconfig iwi0
> iwi0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
>         ether 00:13:ce:a1:e6:81
>         inet 192.168.2.3 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
>         media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect
>         status: associated
>         ssid ALICE-WLAN channel 11 (2462 Mhz 11g) bssid 00:1b:9e:ff:61:0b
>         authmode OPEN privacy ON deftxkey 1 wepkey 1:40-bit bmiss 10
>         scanvalid 60 bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi11g 7
>         roam:rate11g 5 protmode CTS roaming MANUAL
>
> (killing wpa_supplicant)
>
> # ifconfig iwi0
> iwi0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
>         ether 00:13:ce:a1:e6:81
>         inet 192.168.2.3 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
>         media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (DS/2Mbps)
>         status: associated
>         ssid tarara channel 7 (2442 Mhz 11g) bssid 00:13:f7:0d:08:48
>         authmode OPEN privacy ON deftxkey 1 wepkey 1:40-bit bmiss 10
>         scanvalid 60 bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi11g 7
>         roam:rate11g 5 protmode CTS roaming MANUAL
>
> # ifconfig iwi0 list scan
> SSID            BSSID              CHAN RATE   S:N     INT CAPS
> ALICE-WLAN      00:1b:9e:ff:61:0b   11   54M  18:0    100 EP  
> tarara          00:13:f7:0d:08:48    7   54M  39:0    100 EPS 
>
>   
I don't see a wpa_supplicant log.  The way iwi works is rather a hack 
but necessitated by the crappy intel firmware.  There is no way to get 
iwi to just scan but not associate so what's done is we install an 
"impossible ssid" when we just want to scan then fill in the ssid and 
tell it to scan on just the channel where the desired ap is located.  
This has always worked but perhaps you caught ifconfig reporting status 
that was temporary.  Without logs it's impossible to tell.

The other possibillity is your wpa_supplicant.conf file allowed 
association to a "wildcard ap".  Can't tell w/o seeing the config file 
and/or log.

    Sam