Allow configuring Wi-Fi MAC Randomization feature from GUI

Bug #1735002 reported by Jeremy Bícha
18
This bug affects 4 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
NetworkManager
Confirmed
Wishlist
gnome-control-center
Confirmed
Wishlist
gnome-control-center (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Wishlist
Unassigned
network-manager (Ubuntu)
Triaged
Wishlist
Unassigned

Bug Description

Recent versions of NetworkManager have a feature enabled by default to use a random MAC address when scanning for available Wi-Fi networks for privacy. My understanding is that the spoofed MAC address is not used when actually connecting to a network.

This feature was disabled in Ubuntu 17.10 because it broke scanning with some Wi-Fi drivers. My understanding is that there is a bug in some drivers when attempting to change the MAC address. See LP: #1681513.

The bug might not be as big of an issue with the latest version of NetworkManager because
1) There are helpful commits like this (it was not backported to 17.04):
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/?id=46d53e1
2) It is also possible now to selectively disable Wi-Fi MAC Randomization for specific drivers.
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/?id=b869d9

However, I'm really hesitant to re-enable this feature as long as
A) we don't know for sure which drivers are affected,
B) and more importantly, there is no GUI way to turn the feature on or off. Asking users to edit config files isn't very nice.

The MAC Address Randomization feature is really nice (Windows 10 has a similar feature) but I think we need a GUI on/off switch in Settings > Wi-Fi or Settings > Privacy.

Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)
Changed in gnome-control-center (Ubuntu):
importance: Undecided → Wishlist
status: New → Triaged
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)
tags: added: bionic
Changed in gnome-control-center:
importance: Unknown → Wishlist
status: Unknown → Confirmed
Changed in network-manager:
importance: Unknown → Wishlist
status: Unknown → Confirmed
wontfix (wontfix)
tags: added: focal jammy kinetic lunar
Revision history for this message
wontfix (wontfix) wrote (last edit ):

Has the non-GUI part of issue not been solved through blacklists, configuration or internal NM bugfixes yet? Most other distributions and NM themselves have scan randomization enabled as a default.

Revision history for this message
Jeremy Bícha (jbicha) wrote :

I don't want to re-enable this feature until there is a GUI way to turn it off either altogether or for a particular network. It's nice that it works in most places but there are still cases where a user may want to disable it for themselves.

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