WPA_SUPPLICANT(8) WPA_SUPPLICANT(8)
NAME
wpa_supplicant - Wi-Fi Protected Access client and IEEE 802.1X supplicant
SYNOPSIS
wpa_supplicant [ -BddehLqqvw ] [ -iifname ] [ -cconfig file ] [ -Ddriver ]
OVERVIEW
Wireless networks do not require physical access to the network equipment in the same way
as wired networks. This makes it easier for unauthorized users to passively monitor a net-
work and capture all transmitted frames. In addition, unauthorized use of the network is
much easier. In many cases, this can happen even without user's explicit knowledge since
the wireless LAN adapter may have been configured to automatically join any available net-
work.
Link-layer encryption can be used to provide a layer of security for wireless networks.
The original wireless LAN standard, IEEE 802.11, included a simple encryption mechanism,
WEP. However, that proved to be flawed in many areas and network protected with WEP cannot
be consider secure. IEEE 802.1X authentication and frequently changed dynamic WEP keys can
be used to improve the network security, but even that has inherited security issues due
to the use of WEP for encryption. Wi-Fi Protected Access and IEEE 802.11i amendment to the
wireless LAN standard introduce a much improvement mechanism for securing wireless net-
works. IEEE 802.11i enabled networks that are using CCMP (encryption mechanism based on
strong cryptographic algorithm AES) can finally be called secure used for applications
which require efficient protection against unauthorized access.
wpa_supplicant is an implementation of the WPA Supplicant component, i.e., the part that
runs in the client stations. It implements WPA key negotiation with a WPA Authenticator
and EAP authentication with Authentication Server. In addition, it controls the roaming
and IEEE 802.11 authentication/association of the wireless LAN driver.
wpa_supplicant is designed to be a "daemon" program that runs in the background and acts
as the backend component controlling the wireless connection. wpa_supplicant supports sep-
arate frontend programs and an example text-based frontend, wpa_cli, is included with
wpa_supplicant.
Before wpa_supplicant can do its work, the network interface must be available. That
means that the physical device must be present and enabled, and the driver for the device
must have be loaded. Note, however, that the '-w' option of the wpa_supplicant daemon
instructs the daemon to continue running and to wait for the interface to become avail-
able. Without the '-w' option, the daemon will exit immediately if the device is not
already available.
After wpa_supplicant has configured the network device, higher level configuration such as
DHCP may proceed. There are a variety of ways to integrate wpa_supplicant into a
machine's networking scripts, a few of which are described in sections below.
The following steps are used when associating with an AP using WPA:
? wpa_supplicant requests the kernel driver to scan neighboring BSSes
? wpa_supplicant selects a BSS based on its configuration
? wpa_supplicant requests the kernel driver to associate with the chosen BSS
? If WPA-EAP: integrated IEEE 802.1X Supplicant or external Xsupplicant completes EAP
authentication with the authentication server (proxied by the Authenticator in the AP)
? If WPA-EAP: master key is received from the IEEE 802.1X Supplicant
? If WPA-PSK: wpa_supplicant uses PSK as the master session key
? wpa_supplicant completes WPA 4-Way Handshake and Group Key Handshake with the Authenti-
cator (AP)
? wpa_supplicant configures encryption keys for unicast and broadcast
? normal data packets can be transmitted and received
SUPPORTED FEATURES
Supported WPA/IEEE 802.11i features:
? WPA-PSK ("WPA-Personal")
? WPA with EAP (e.g., with RADIUS authentication server) ("WPA-Enterprise") Following
authentication methods are supported with an integrate IEEE 802.1X Supplicant:
? EAP-TLS
? EAP-PEAP/MSCHAPv2 (both PEAPv0 and PEAPv1)
? EAP-PEAP/TLS (both PEAPv0 and PEAPv1)
? EAP-PEAP/GTC (both PEAPv0 and PEAPv1)
? EAP-PEAP/OTP (both PEAPv0 and PEAPv1)
? EAP-PEAP/MD5-Challenge (both PEAPv0 and PEAPv1)
? EAP-TTLS/EAP-MD5-Challenge
? EAP-TTLS/EAP-GTC
? EAP-TTLS/EAP-OTP
? EAP-TTLS/EAP-MSCHAPv2
? EAP-TTLS/EAP-TLS
? EAP-TTLS/MSCHAPv2
? EAP-TTLS/MSCHAP
? EAP-TTLS/PAP
? EAP-TTLS/CHAP
? EAP-SIM
? EAP-AKA
? EAP-PSK
? EAP-PAX
? LEAP (note: requires special support from the driver for IEEE 802.11 authentication)
? (following methods are supported, but since they do not generate keying material, they
cannot be used with WPA or IEEE 802.1X WEP keying)
? EAP-MD5-Challenge
? EAP-MSCHAPv2
? EAP-GTC
? EAP-OTP
? key management for CCMP, TKIP, WEP104, WEP40
? RSN/WPA2 (IEEE 802.11i)
? pre-authentication
? PMKSA caching
AVAILABLE DRIVERS
The available drivers to specify with the -D option are:
hostap (default) Host AP driver (Intersil Prism2/2.5/3). (this can also be used with Lin-
uxant DriverLoader).
hermes Agere Systems Inc. driver (Hermes-I/Hermes-II).
madwifi
MADWIFI 802.11 support (Atheros, etc.).
atmel ATMEL AT76C5XXx (USB, PCMCIA).
wext Linux wireless extensions (generic).
ndiswrapper
Linux ndiswrapper.
broadcom
Broadcom wl.o driver.
ipw Intel ipw2100/2200 driver.
wired wpa_supplicant wired Ethernet driver
bsd BSD 802.11 support (Atheros, etc.).
ndis Windows NDIS driver.
COMMAND LINE OPTIONS
-B Run daemon in the background.
-i ifname
Interface to listen on.
-c filename
Path to configuration file.
-D driver
Driver to use. See the available options below.
-d Increase debugging verbosity (-dd even more).
-K Include keys (passwords, etc.) in debug output.
-t Include timestamp in debug messages.
-e Use external IEEE 802.1X Supplicant (e.g., xsupplicant) (this disables the internal
Supplicant).
-h Help. Show a usage message.
-L Show license (GPL and BSD).
-q Decrease debugging verbosity (-qq even less).
-v Show version.
-w wait for interface to be added, if needed. normally, wpa_supplicant will exit if
the interface is not there yet.
-N Start describing new interface.
EXAMPLES
In most common cases, wpa_supplicant is started with:
wpa_supplicant -Bw -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0
This makes the process fork into background and wait for the wlan0 interface if it is not
available at startup time.
The easiest way to debug problems, and to get debug log for bug reports, is to start
wpa_supplicant on foreground with debugging enabled:
wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0 -d
wpa_supplicant can control multiple interfaces (radios) either by running one process for
each interface separately or by running just one process and list of options at command
line. Each interface is separated with -N argument. As an example, following command would
start wpa_supplicant for two interfaces:
wpa_supplicant \
-c wpa1.conf -i wlan0 -D hostap -N \
-c wpa2.conf -i ath0 -D madwifi
OS REQUIREMENTS
Current hardware/software requirements:
? Linux kernel 2.4.x or 2.6.x with Linux Wireless Extensions v15 or newer
? FreeBSD 6-CURRENT
? Microsoft Windows with WinPcap (at least WinXP, may work with other versions)
SUPPORTED DRIVERS
Host AP driver for Prism2/2.5/3 (development snapshot/v0.2.x)
(http://hostap.epitest.fi/) Driver needs to be set in Managed mode ('iwconfig wlan0
mode managed'). Please note that station firmware version needs to be 1.7.0 or
newer to work in WPA mode.
Linuxant DriverLoader
(http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/) with Windows NDIS driver for your wlan card
supporting WPA.
Agere Systems Inc. Linux Driver
(http://www.agere.com/support/drivers/) Please note that the driver interface file
(driver_hermes.c) and hardware specific include files are not included in the
wpa_supplicant distribution. You will need to copy these from the source package of
the Agere driver.
madwifi driver for cards based on Atheros chip set (ar521x)
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/) Please note that you will need to modify
the wpa_supplicant .config file to use the correct path for the madwifi driver root
directory (CFLAGS += -I../madwifi/wpa line in example defconfig).
ATMEL AT76C5XXx driver for USB and PCMCIA cards
(http://atmelwlandriver.sourceforge.net/).
Linux ndiswrapper
(http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/) with Windows NDIS driver.
Broadcom wl.o driver
This is a generic Linux driver for Broadcom IEEE 802.11a/g cards. However, it is
proprietary driver that is not publicly available except for couple of exceptions,
mainly Broadcom-based APs/wireless routers that use Linux. The driver binary can be
downloaded, e.g., from Linksys support site (http://www.linksys.com/sup-
port/gpl.asp) for Linksys WRT54G. The GPL tarball includes cross-compiler and the
needed header file, wlioctl.h, for compiling wpa_supplicant. This driver support
in wpa_supplicant is expected to work also with other devices based on Broadcom
driver (assuming the driver includes client mode support).
Intel ipw2100 driver
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipw2100/)
Intel ipw2200 driver
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/ipw2200/)
Linux wireless extensions
In theory, any driver that supports Linux wireless extensions can be used with IEEE
802.1X (i.e., not WPA) when using ap_scan=0 option in configuration file.
Wired Ethernet drivers
Use ap_scan=0.
BSD net80211 layer (e.g., Atheros driver)
At the moment, this is for FreeBSD 6-CURRENT branch.
Windows NDIS
The current Windows port requires WinPcap (http://winpcap.polito.it/). See README-
Windows.txt for more information.
wpa_supplicant was designed to be portable for different drivers and operating systems.
Hopefully, support for more wlan cards and OSes will be added in the future. See devel-
oper.txt for more information about the design of wpa_supplicant and porting to other
drivers. One main goal is to add full WPA/WPA2 support to Linux wireless extensions to
allow new drivers to be supported without having to implement new driver-specific inter-
face code in wpa_supplicant.
ARCHITECTURE
The wpa_supplicant system consists of the following components:
wpa_supplicant.conf
the configuration file describing all networks that the user wants the computer to
connect to.
wpa_supplicant
the program that directly interacts with the network interface.
wpa_cli
the client program that provides a high-level interface to the functionality of the
daemon.
wpa_passphrase
a utility needed to construct wpa_supplicant.conf files that include encrypted
passwords.
QUICK START
First, make a configuration file, e.g. /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, that describes the net-
works you are interested in. See wpa_supplicant(5) for details.
Once the configuration is ready, you can test whether the configuration works by running
wpa_supplicant with following command to start it on foreground with debugging enabled:
wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -d
Assuming everything goes fine, you can start using following command to start wpa_suppli-
cant on background without debugging:
wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B
Please note that if you included more than one driver interface in the build time configu-
ration (.config), you may need to specify which interface to use by including -D option on the command line.
INTERFACE TO PCMCIA-CS/CARDMRG
For example, following small changes to pcmcia-cs scripts can be used to enable WPA sup-
port:
Add MODE="Managed" and WPA="y" to the network scheme in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts.
Add the following block to the end of 'start' action handler in /etc/pcmcia/wireless:
if [ "$WPA" = "y" -a -x /usr/local/bin/wpa_supplicant ]; then
/usr/local/bin/wpa_supplicant -Bw -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -i$DEVICE
fi
Add the following block to the end of 'stop' action handler (may need to be separated from
other actions) in /etc/pcmcia/wireless:
if [ "$WPA" = "y" -a -x /usr/local/bin/wpa_supplicant ]; then
killall wpa_supplicant
fi
This will make cardmgr start wpa_supplicant when the card is plugged in. wpa_supplicant
will wait until the interface is set up--either when a static IP address is configured or
when DHCP client is started--and will then negotiate keys with the AP.
SEE ALSO
wpa_background(8) wpa_supplicant.conf(5) wpa_cli(8) wpa_passphrase(8)
LEGAL
wpa_supplicant is copyright (c) 2003-2005, Jouni Malinen <> and contrib-
utors. All Rights Reserved.
This program is dual-licensed under both the GPL version 2 and BSD license. Either license
may be used at your option.
06 May 2006 WPA_SUPPLICANT(8)
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