ESP32: Unexpected BNEP_EVENT_CHANNEL_CLOSED after ~40 sec with esp-idf v4.x and BR/EDR Secure Connections about btstack HOT 7 OPEN

No obvious idea. Could you post the full HCI Packet Log after converting it with tool/create_packet_log.py?
Maybe something else is going on that causes the disconnect.

from btstack.

Here's the Wireshark packet log.
There's 4 successful HTTP requests in there, shortly after the last one succeeds, the channel is closed for some reason.
channel_closed.zip

from btstack.

I see. Nothing else is happening really. The disconnect is caused by a Link Layer time out, it would be different if iOS disconnects actively.

Only idea: disable BR/EDR Secure Connections by calling gap_secure_connections_enable(false) before connecting.

from btstack.

Looks like calling gap_secure_connections_enable(false) actually did the trick! It's been running for 10+ minutes now and it hasn't disconnected.

I'm not sure I understand why this works, was iOS waiting for a special response related to this security setting and because it never arrived the connection was closed?

Also, I don't know nearly enough about Bluetooth to understand what the (security) implications are of doing this. Can you elaborate a bit?

from btstack.

It's not related to iOS. In the past, there have been a number of issues in the BR/EDR Secure Connection implementation on the ESP32. Here's the latest one: espressif/esp-idf#13661

The security implications are minor. As far as I know, the legacy pairing is not less secure than the newer one. It's just that the legacy one is a a custom mechanism that was created for Bluetooth only, while the new one uses standard cryptographic algorithms (AES-CCM). Still, there hasn't been an academic paper that claimed that the older mechanism is insecure.

Could you retest your use case with the test libdtm_app from the other issue with BR/EDR Secure Connections enabled?
If it's fixed by that, please leave a comment there to let Espressif know. If not, please create a new issue and post logs files with the test library and comment that everything works without BR/EDR Secure Connections. Thanks!

from btstack.

Thanks for clarifying!

I tried to build with the test lib in espressif/esp-idf#13661 but the linker complains about 2 undefined references, likely because this project is still on esp-idf 4.x. I won't be upgrading this project to v5 anytime soon since it's quite involved because of the netif changes in esp-idf v5.

This project ran fine the last couple of years by the way, using BTStack 1.3.2, it was only because apparently after a certain iOS update it refused to connect that I started investigating. Tried upgrading to BTStack 1.6, but that didn't improve things until I tried your gap_secure_connections_enable(false) suggestion. Then I added that call to the version that still used BTStack 1.3.2 and it also started working again!

I'll revisit this if I ever come around to upgrading this project to esp-idf v5.

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how to use ESP32 run as a NAP role?

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