[Sugar-devel] API-string freeze break request

[Samuel Greenfeld]

Personally I think the odds that someone would do a disassociation attack
to monitor or SSH into the laptops of Sugar-age students are low enough
that it isn't worth designing for.  I do not know of any consumer product
which currently tries to guard against being forced to search for another
network to use.

But it would be useful to have the ability to "lock" to a network (AP,
ad-hoc, or otherwise), and not resort to searching NetworkManager's
known/preferred list if communication is temporarily lost.

5 GHz ad-hoc is slightly tricky in that there are only a few channels
(36/40/44/48) one can manually select; the rest may only be selected via
automatic means.  According to Wikipedia[*] they seem to be reasonably well
accepted -- but in some countries they may only be used indoors (so no
"under the tree").

[*] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels


On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 9:12 PM, James Cameron <quozl at laptop.org> wrote:

> G'day,
>
> I've reviewed the patches.
>
> I don't think this is worth breaking API and string freeze, as both
> are new features.
>
> I'd like to see them go through the new feature design process.
>
> In reviewing the patches, two more new features came to mind:
>
> - use higher bandwidth 5 GHz channels for ad-hoc, not only the
>   channels 1, 6, and 11,
>
> - secured ad-hoc.
>
> With ad-hoc enabled a remote attacker need only transmit packets that
> prevent use of an access point, and the laptop will revert to
> unsecured ad-hoc, and begin to reveal useful data to an attacker.
>
> --
> James Cameron
> http://quozl.linux.org.au/
> _______________________________________________
> Sugar-devel mailing list
> Sugar-devel at lists.sugarlabs.org
> http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/sugar-devel
>
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