There is a potential security issue here. Whenever a legitimate program is seen asking for a password as the result of an automatic operation people come to think of it as normal. This undermines the suspicion that we would otherwise encourage in people to help them avoid scams and malicious software.
A more serious security issue arises if you are using a normal user account and the connection in question is shared. In this case you get a second dialogue box asking for an administrator password for privilege escalation. In this case we have users socially engineered to provide privilege escalation to any user-space program that impersonates this bug. I think it would be preferable that it didn't ask for a password (even if we know that's what's wrong) and just retried from time-to-time. If the user wants to remedy the situation they can just go through what they did first time they connected, at least then they expect to be asked for a password so no harm is done. Observations based on 16.04. -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to network-manager in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/615239 Title: Every Wi-Fi disconnection is treated as an authentication error Status in Canonical System Image: Confirmed Status in NetworkManager: Confirmed Status in network-manager package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: Binary package hint: network-manager I'm using lucid, with the 0.8-0ubuntu3, in a laptop, and is incredible that the nm-applet couldn't diagnostic why the wireless connection was lost and only trow the password prompt when I've lost the signal. nm-applet should see the kern.log or dmesg to react at signal lost. For example, when the kernel try 3 times probe the AP and don't get response nm-applet say The pc are far away from the access point and can not be connected. Please, move close to the access point or try another more near. And by the way, when the authentication fails, or the association. --- Architecture: i386 CRDA: Error: [Errno 2] No existe el archivo o directorio CheckboxSubmission: ee8ebec101005ce57a9c3355b36ca8a7 CheckboxSystem: edda5d4f616ca792bf437989cb597002 DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04 IfupdownConfig: auto lo iface lo inet loopback InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100429) IpRoute: 172.16.254.0/24 dev wlan1 proto kernel scope link src 172.16.254.5 metric 2 169.254.0.0/16 dev wlan1 scope link metric 1000 default via 172.16.254.200 dev wlan1 proto static Keyfiles: Error: [Errno 2] No existe el archivo o directorio Package: network-manager 0.8-0ubuntu3 PackageArchitecture: i386 ProcEnviron: PATH=(custom, no user) LANG=es_DO.UTF-8 SHELL=/bin/bash ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-24.39-generic 2.6.32.15+drm33.5 RfKill: 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no Tags: lucid Uname: Linux 2.6.32-24-generic i686 UserGroups: To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/canonical-devices-system-image/+bug/615239/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
