Bug 836423 – net-wireless/wpa_supplicant-2.10 no longer connects to my wifi - wpa_parse_wpa_ie_rsn: invalid group cipher 0x8 (000fac02)

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE

[Description igel 2022-03-30 12:54:36 UTC]

I recently upgraded my wpa_supplicant from 2.9 to 2.10 and my laptop stopped connecting to my WPA2-PSK wifi at home. Switching back to 2.9 fixed the issue for me, but that ebuild is no longer in the official portage tree.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. install net-wireless/wpa_supplicant-2.10
2. reboot
Actual Results:  
does not connect to wifi

Expected Results:  
connects to wifi

the log file for 2.10 claims:
wpa_parse_wpa_ie_rsn: invalid group cipher 0x8 (000fac02)
wpa_parse_wpa_ie_rsn: invalid group cipher 0x8 (000fac02)
wifi:    skip RSN IE - parse failed

while the 2.9 logfile correctly states
wifi:    selected based on RSN IE

so something is up with the WPA2 parse. Since I changed nothing else in the system, I conclude that it's a problem with wpa_supplicant-2.10. I submitted a bug-report upstream to their mailing list, but my issue with Gentoo right now is that the ebuild for 2.9 is no longer in the tree so others having this problem are going to be in a pickle.

[Comment 1 Mike Gilbert 2022-03-31 01:46:36 UTC]

Try enabling the "tkip" USE flag. Alternatively, enable CCMP (AES) on your home wifi.

[Comment 2 Marcus 2022-03-31 05:02:54 UTC]

I was also just bitten by this. I'm not using tkip on my access points, they're all using AES.

wpa_parse_wpa_ie_rsn: invalid group cipher 0x8 (000fac02)
wpa_parse_wpa_ie_rsn: invalid group cipher 0x8 (000fac02)

There's a forum thread about it currently as well.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-869609-start-0.html

I've also downgraded and masked anything higher than 2.9-r8.

[Comment 3 Marcus 2022-03-31 05:17:46 UTC]

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-1147832.html

Apologies, link to forum thread before was unrelated this is the correct link.

[Comment 4 igel 2022-03-31 09:39:05 UTC]

upstream also suggested to configure the AP to not use TKIP no more since something called the Wi-Fi alliance deemed TKIP unsafe.

I'm not sure if the wpa_supplicant ebuild already warns about this issue -- when upgrading @world, I often have trouble keeping up with the information printed by any of the installed ebuilds...

[Comment 5 igel 2022-04-18 16:14:51 UTC]

yeah, so after reading the forum posts and conversing with upstream, I just enabled the tkip useflag and 2.10 does what it's supposed to now. I guess this can be closed, but someone please make sure that users are aware of the issue when upgrading from 2.9.

[Comment 6 Pacho Ramos 2022-04-18 16:48:22 UTC]

I agree that a warning should be emitted as it is not nice to see that you cannot connect to the network after updating

I also suffered this when needed to connect to the lab wifi and I couldn't :/

[Comment 7 Dima Pasechnik 2022-12-23 23:17:05 UTC]

@floppym : 

Should this be closed as a duplicate of https://bugs.gentoo.org/865343 ?

[Comment 8 Mike Gilbert 2022-12-25 02:12:30 UTC]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 865343 ***