#1069746 connman: cannot configure a wifi network to forget credentials

Package:
connman
Source:
connman
Description:
Intel Connection Manager daemon
Submitter:
Francesco Poli (wintermute)
Date:
2024-04-24 06:48:03 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1069746#5
Date:
2024-04-24 06:46:12 UTC
From:
To:
Hello and thanks for maintaining this package in Debian!

It works pretty well for most cases (except for the case described
in bug report [#1066128]). I have now found another case where
connman should work better.

[#1066128]: <https://bugs.debian.org/1066128>

I have added a configuration file '/var/lib/connman/eduroam.config',
as documented in the connman-service.config(5) manpage, in order
to connect to eduroam (which, as you may know, is a University wifi
network, which uses security type ieee8021x and EAP type peap).

It works: I am able to connect to eduroam, by using my University
single-sign-on credentials (username and password).

However these credentials (especially the password) are stored
(in cleartext!) into a subdirectory under /var/lib/connman/
and are remembered for future use.
Subdirectories under /var/lib/connman/ are only readable by root,
but the connman daemon has access to them and makes their data
usable by other unprivileged users of the box (even a laptop
may have more than one regular user...).

This can be convenient, but has some important drawbacks:

 * storing passwords in cleartext files (only readable by root) can
   be considered acceptable for psk wifi networks, where the passphrase
   is basically a shared secret (known by a number of people), but
   becomes definitely more troublesome for eduroam wifi network, where the
   access credentials may be the single-sign-on credentials used to
   access many other services of one's own University

 * making eduroam access credentials of one user usable by other users
   of the system may be considered inappropriate, since eduroam access
   credentials are personal

For these reasons, I would like to configure connman, so that it forgets
the eduroam access credentials: connman should ask me to re-enter username
and password each time I connect to eduroam, without storing these
credentials for future use.
This should be configurable on a per-network basis, by setting some
appropriate option in '/var/lib/connman/eduroam.config'.

I failed to find any relevant option in the documentation.
Am I missing anything important?

Can this be done for one specific network (eduroam)?

If not, please forward my bug report upstream as a feature request.

Thanks for your time, bye!