I recently replaced the hard drive in my laptop, so I performed a fresh install of Fedora 32. Yet, I encountered an issue when trying to connect my laptop to my hidden wireless network.
My wireless network is hidden and filters on MAC addresses. I do not think the access point’s MAC filtering is the problem, as:
- I can disable the MAC filtering and the connection still fails; and
- I can disable hiding the network while keeping MAC filtering enabled, and the laptop successfully connects.
When I attempt to connect to my hidden network, it hangs for ~25 seconds in the scanning phase and then fails activation. The below is from the output of “journalctl -lf
”:
NetworkManager[1429]: <info> [1594854004.0972] device (wlp58s0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning NetworkManager[1429]: <info> [1594854004.0973] device (p2p-dev-wlp58s0): supplicant management interface state: disconnected -> scanning NetworkManager[1429]: <warn> [1594854029.3235] device (wlp58s0): Activation: (wifi) association took too long, failing activation NetworkManager[1429]: <info> [1594854029.3236] device (wlp58s0): state change: config -> failed (reason 'ssid-not-found', sys-iface-state: 'managed')
If I disable hiding the network, I instead see it continuing on, successfully:
NetworkManager[1429]: <info> [1594852848.2508] device (wlp58s0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning NetworkManager[1429]: <info> [1594852848.2509] device (p2p-dev-wlp58s0): supplicant management interface state: disconnected -> scanning wpa_supplicant[1542]: wlp58s0: SME: Trying to authenticate with 00:00:00:00:00:01 (SSID='MyNetwork' freq=2442 MHz) kernel: wlp58s0: authenticate with 00:00:00:00:00:01
My NetworkManager configuration shows that I have configured this connection to know about the network being hidden (see the 17th line in the below output).
$ nmcli connection show MyNetwork | grep 802-11-wireless connection.type: 802-11-wireless 802-11-wireless.ssid: MyNetwork 802-11-wireless.mode: infrastructure 802-11-wireless.band: -- 802-11-wireless.channel: 0 802-11-wireless.bssid: -- 802-11-wireless.rate: 0 802-11-wireless.tx-power: 0 802-11-wireless.mac-address: 00:00:00:00:00:02 802-11-wireless.cloned-mac-address: permanent 802-11-wireless.generate-mac-address-mask:-- 802-11-wireless.mac-address-blacklist: -- 802-11-wireless.mac-address-randomization:default 802-11-wireless.mtu: auto 802-11-wireless.seen-bssids: 00:00:00:00:00:01 802-11-wireless.hidden: yes 802-11-wireless.powersave: 0 (default) 802-11-wireless.wake-on-wlan: 0x1 (default) 802-11-wireless-security.key-mgmt: wpa-psk 802-11-wireless-security.wep-tx-keyidx: 0 802-11-wireless-security.auth-alg: -- 802-11-wireless-security.proto: -- 802-11-wireless-security.pairwise: -- 802-11-wireless-security.group: -- 802-11-wireless-security.pmf: 0 (default) 802-11-wireless-security.leap-username: -- 802-11-wireless-security.wep-key0: <hidden> 802-11-wireless-security.wep-key1: <hidden> 802-11-wireless-security.wep-key2: <hidden> 802-11-wireless-security.wep-key3: <hidden> 802-11-wireless-security.wep-key-flags: 0 (none) 802-11-wireless-security.wep-key-type: unknown 802-11-wireless-security.psk: <hidden> 802-11-wireless-security.psk-flags: 0 (none) 802-11-wireless-security.leap-password: <hidden> 802-11-wireless-security.leap-password-flags:0 (none) 802-11-wireless-security.wps-method: 0x0 (default) 802-11-wireless-security.fils: 0 (default)
Does anybody have a suggestion on how to troubleshoot this, please? My web and mailing list searches have not turned up anything helpful. Thanks!
(And yes, I’ve seen statements about how hiding SSIDs is just “security through obscurity” because it is so easy for an attacker to find it. I see this situation as more as “defense in depth” where, admittedly, the first layer of hiding the network is just not too deep. But that doesn’t make it totally useless.)