#1051119 NM reports fake Wi-Fi BSSIDs

Package:
network-manager
Source:
network-manager
Description:
network management framework (daemon and userspace tools)
Submitter:
Marco d'Itri
Date:
2023-09-26 10:30:02 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1051119#5
Date:
2023-09-03 02:10:01 UTC
From:
To:
"nmcli device wifi list" reports obviously fake BSSIDs for all networks
to which I have not connected to:

IN-USE  BSSID              SSID                MODE   CHAN  RATE       SIGNAL  >
        B4:4B:D6:..:..:..  (omitted)           Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  87      >
        00:01:02:00:03:90  (omitted)           Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  77      >
        00:01:02:00:03:91  WOW FI - FASTWEB    Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  77      >
        00:01:02:00:03:FD  (omitted)           Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  75      >
*       B4:4B:D6:..:..:..  (omitted)           Infra  36    65 Mbit/s  59      >
        00:01:02:00:03:B3  (omitted)      461  Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  57      >
        00:01:02:00:03:8E  FRITZ!Box 7530 WB   Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  55      >
        82:8F:34:..:..:..  Vodafone-WiFi       Infra  3     65 Mbit/s  54      >
        00:01:02:00:03:93  TIM-29740309        Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  35      >
        00:01:02:00:03:96  (omitted)      045  Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  30      >
        00:01:02:00:04:AE  Sala da pranzo.v,   Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  27      >
        00:01:02:00:04:71  (omitted)           Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  25      >
        00:01:02:00:04:BC  (omitted)           Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  25      >
        00:01:02:00:04:A1  (omitted)           Infra  2     65 Mbit/s  20      >

(The real BSSIDs and the non-generic SSIDs have been elided for
paranoia reasons.)

This breaks the Mozilla Location Services API (used, among others, by
Firefox and Geoclue), which once it sees at least two of these
00:01:02:00:03:* BSSIDs it will happily geolocate me either in Vietnam
or (less frequently) in Germany.

I do not believe this to be a kernel issue because "iwlist scanning"
properly reports the BSSIDs of all networks.
#1051119#10
Date:
2023-09-26 09:00:20 UTC
From:
To:
Control: retitle -1 NM reports fake Wi-Fi BSSIDs with iwd
Control: severity -1 normal


Marco told me, that he is using iwd.
I suspect that this a iwd specific problem, as I can't reproduce the
issue with wpasupplicant.

Marco, let me know if you can reproduce the issue with wpasupplicant or not.

While iwd is not as well supported as wpasupplicant, it's probably still
worth reporting upstream at
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/

Regards,
Michael