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I've been using 12.04LTS on my laptop for a while now, with automatic security patches etc. etc. I use wired ethernet at work, and wifi at home. Until recently both worked seamlessly and without any fuss.

However now I find that Network manager will not re-connect to my home wifi, and when I use "Edit connections" to check the settings, I see that it has loaded my LOGIN password into the WiFi password field!

This is a major security concern for me, because NM should have NO knowledge of my login password, as well as because I understand NM stores what it thinks is network passwords in cleartext.

I've often had to completely delete all my previous wifi connections and manually connect up to my home router again, typing in my Wifi password to make the connection.

Is anyone else suffering with this bug? Any fixes?

I've done some google searching, and on here, and other places, and no-one seems to have reported anything quite like it.

Help!?

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  • How interesting, just today there is an update to the Gnu wifi and mobile library support functions... I wonder if this will cure my issues. Will post more info if things change.
    – DaveEmrich
    Feb 18, 2015 at 8:03
  • After the above update, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Under the nm-applet, if I right-click, I CANNOT "edit connections" any more (it is greyed out), and furthermore under the left-click "VPN connections", the configure vpn, and disconnect vpn are always greyed out, whether I have an established VPN connection or not. I have spent the last hour on google searching for solutions, and they are all irrelevant. I've done everything I could find to no avail. I refuse to format my computer and re-install 12.04 from scratch, that's a microsoft "solution".
    – DaveEmrich
    Feb 24, 2015 at 6:58

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I think there is a simple answer to this.

When you open the browser have you ever been prompted to insert you user password to unlock the keyring? To me this happens quite often.

It's also possible for NM to prompt asking for Wifi password (probably due to failed Wifi authentication ), and I can tell you the prompts are very similar in look.

So, maybe, you entered your login password to unlock the keyring while you were changing the wifi password instead. It has happened top me. That explains why you find your login password in NM.

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  • I guess all those are possible, but I don't use a keyring to protect my wifi password (only my SSH private keys). And more to the point, it is only recently that it has started "forgetting" the wifi config/password, it used to work seamlessly prior to about a month ago.
    – DaveEmrich
    Feb 17, 2015 at 0:52

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