wpa_supplicant: SAE auth failure with MLO AP
Pablo MARTIN-GOMEZ
pmartin-gomez at freebox.fr
Thu Dec 11 08:09:22 PST 2025
Hello all,
I'm running a STA with wpa_supplicant built from git commit 60f5c09304
(main branch from 10 days ago). I was trying to get it to connect to a
MLD AP (hostapd based) configured with WPA3 Transition and 2-links (5
GHz & 2.4 GHz) and receiving systematically an auth failure with reason
CONN_FAILED. I've attached a PCAP capture to understand what is happening.
What I guess is happening is that the STA sends a SAE commit frame with
a multi-link element [using MLD address] but with hunt and peck method
[this is not compliant with 802.11be] and the AP responds with a SAE
commit frame without the multi-link element [using the associated STA
address] and the hunt and peck [this is compliant], and this ends up
with confirm frame with failed status. Setting the option "sae_pwe=2"
immediately fixed my connection issue.
So currently I don't have an issue but I'm not expecting wpa_supplicant
to failed to connect with a valid configuration. I think I would be able
to propose a patch to fix this but I'm not sure of which option is the
best: should we prevent a multi-link setup if H2E is not activated or
should we activate automatically H2E for a multi-link setup (this is
already done for 6 GHz BSSs)? [there is also the discussion of whatever
hostapd should accept the auth discarding the multi-link element or
responding with a failure status code in the commit frame]
Best regards,
Pablo MG
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