Return-path: Received: from mx1.redhat.com ([66.187.233.31]:36816 "EHLO mx1.redhat.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1757518AbYE0NyD (ORCPT ); Tue, 27 May 2008 09:54:03 -0400 Subject: Re: [PATCH] iwlwifi: fix oops on wep key insertion From: Dan Williams To: Tomas Winkler Cc: JMF , linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org In-Reply-To: <1ba2fa240805270541wadf0f16t2001528f39b37ea8@mail.gmail.com> References: <1211865214-1640-1-git-send-email-joonwpark81@gmail.com> <1ba2fa240805262341s62f017e7ka7502cbe55c1d348@mail.gmail.com> <1ba2fa240805270541wadf0f16t2001528f39b37ea8@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain Date: Tue, 27 May 2008 09:53:43 -0400 Message-Id: <1211896423.1746.9.camel@localhost.localdomain> (sfid-20080527_155421_038091_CE55B356) Mime-Version: 1.0 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On Tue, 2008-05-27 at 15:41 +0300, Tomas Winkler wrote: > On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:58 PM, JMF wrote: > > Tomas Winkler writes: > > > >> WEP key is of fixed size 13 or 5 bytes, this setting should be > >> refused somewhere in the mac wext handler. > >> NACK. > >> Tomas > > What about 256-bit WEP key (232-bit key I think), it won't be supported? > > > Not supported by iwlwifi HW, have to be done by SW, We need to check > then probably in driver whether we support it or not and return error > value in this case, in other cases I'm not sure how defensive the code > should be.... > By the way isn't this a waste of bits. AES seams to be secure enough. > Who is implementing this at all? IIRC D-Link is one manufacturer who implemented 152-bit and higher WEP keys when people started to get scared about WEP, but before 802.11i/WPA actually came out. I'm pretty sure that not too many sites use greater than 104/128-bit WEP, and the cards that support it in hardware (most cards were fullmac at the time) we can probably count on one hand. For softmac cards, we'd have to weigh the maintenance cost of keeping the codepaths around that most people wouldn't use and for hardware that nobody developing the stack currently has to test against against the benefit of enabling these users to work with legacy APs. I've gotten maybe 1 or 2 requests for > 104/128-bit WEP key support for NM in 3 years. Nice to have, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra code and maintenance burden? Would be good to have somebody tell us what hardware (APs and cards) support this though. Dan