Management Frame Protection vs SAE

For Developers
1

Can the developers reconsider not enforcing Management Frame Protection on SAE?

  1. A lot of devices with older Radios does not support Management Frame Protection
  2. Older Client Devices does not support Management Frame Protection
2

Protected management frames are part of the WPA3 spec so that would seem unlikely to change?

3

Thing is I have seen commercial Wireless Router with WPA3-SAE without MFP

4

WPA3 as a standard hard-depends on IEEE 802.11w being active.

While you can use SAE without pmf/ mfp, that is no longer WPA3.

5

It's not enforced in Openwrt, you can configure ieee80211w to 0. This will disable 802.11w for the given VAP, even when it's enforced by default for sae|owe|eap192|eap-eap192.

6

If I am not wrong LuCI forces it to be enabled

7

Screenshot from 2020-05-19 19-05-37
Screenshot from 2020-05-19 19-05-37714×817 66.3 KB

You can disable it using the Dropdown depicted, although i would strongly advice you to upgrade to a more modern router, as the TL-WR1043 v1 is the only widespread ath9k device which does not support 802.11w. You will also run into troubles, as newer devices might require 802.11w to be enabled.