Feature request: use random MAC addresses when scanning

[Jouni Malinen]

On Sun, Jun 08, 2014 at 02:53:12PM -0600, Eric Branson wrote:
> I have a humble feature request: the option, preferably enabled by
> default, to use random, locally administered MAC addresses when
> sending probe and GAS frames etc. used in scanning and associated
> station interrogation functions.

This is a request for the driver/kernel component first, i.e.,
wpa_supplicant cannot really do much about this without such support
being provided from the kernel. As such, this would be more suited for
some other mailing list (like linux-wireless if this was in the context
of upstream Linux drivers).

I did plan on implementing this quite some time ago, but it turned out
to be far from trivial with the current cfg80211 design and number of
constraints from various corner cases. It could be relatively
straightforward to handle this for the case of scanning and GAS in
unconnected state (even without kernel changes), but it gets much more
complex when taking into account associated state. It should still be
doable with most drivers at least with some constraints, but it does
require someone to go through the effort of adding support for this in
cfg80211 (and mac80211/drivers for operations while associated) to allow
more complete implementation.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA