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When do encryption keys exchange?

I have a problem with bonding with a static passkey. I have some sensors, which have a static passkey hardcoded in them. If I want to bond with them, I have to provide this passkey from my custom central app, which uses s120 and SDK 8.1.0. For the past few days I wasn't able to make a successfull bond, because I keep getting BLE_GAP_SEC_STATUS_AUTH_REQ from the sensor. I can't find much information on what to do in this case. I can bond with MCP just fine.

I compared log file from MCP and sniffer trace from my central bonding attempt and they are different in one very impotant aspect. MCP exchanges keys and encrypts the connection before trying to authenticate the link. Default behavioral of the device manage in SDK 8.1.0 is not the same. If I call dm_security_setup_req it only forces authentication without previous key exchange. This is why authentication fails. If I go into debug mode, I can see that keys are always 0. Does anyone have any suggestions about this matter? Are there any examples that mimic MCP behavioral?

Edit: added trace logs for windows phone, s120 and MCP log file, all done with the same sensor (which uses TI stack).

Windows phone pairing attempt: windows_pairing_with_adv.pcapng

S120 pairing attempt: s120_central_pairing.pcapng

MCP log file: log.txt

Android bonding attempt: android_bonding.pcapng

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  • You could have mentioned that your peripheral was from TI :) Then it may be difficult for me to reproduce it. From your pictures I can't really see what the difference is, you haven't included the Pairing Request in both. Maybe you can just upload the files? Does it change anything if you set MITM? I suspect that the TI chip rejects the pairing request because the central says it doesn't support MITM.

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  • You could have mentioned that your peripheral was from TI :) Then it may be difficult for me to reproduce it. From your pictures I can't really see what the difference is, you haven't included the Pairing Request in both. Maybe you can just upload the files? Does it change anything if you set MITM? I suspect that the TI chip rejects the pairing request because the central says it doesn't support MITM.

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