Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 496226
[enh] Creating wireless ad-hoc networks should prompt for root password
Last modified: 2011-05-18 10:32:56 EDT
Description of problem: It's very easy to create ad-hoc networks by unprivileged users. This can be a security issue if someone unwittingly enables an ad-hoc network and enters into a secured zone. Admins should be able to control the actions a user might take
Changing title to reflect the enhancement request. -- Fedora Bugzappers volunteer triage team https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers
I think it's a security issue so it shouldn't be treated as an enhancement. A home user could easily enable this without knowing what's happening and thereby allowing anyone access to her network.
While it may be a security issue, it's still essentially an enhancement but with a higher priority. It's not a bug per-se in existing code, but a change in defaults and additional functionality to allow wifi sharing to be locked down by an administrator.
To begin with, allowing a pop-up notification that is displayed (prompting about a possible security risk and suggesting turning off ad-hoc network) when an user connects to a wired/wireless network with ad-hoc networking enabled might work. Root password prompt or, admin access might defeat the purpose of 'ad-hoc' networks which is to allow creation of temporary network zones easily and quickly.
Additionally, the nm-applet icon could be changed when the ad-hoc network is active to counter for the case when someone else starts an ad-hoc network when the user is not around. That way when the user comes back he knows that something is wrong and can act immediately. This will also remind him to shut off the network when he is done. The priority is set to low. Shouldn't it get high priority as per Comment #4?
This appears to be dupe of BZ 496247 or atleast something similar
0.8 in rawhide/F12 has a real permissions framework for this; we need to do the UI level stuff again.
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 12 development cycle. Changing version to '12'. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
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Fedora 12 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2010-12-02. Fedora 12 is no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug. If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.