[Klug-general] A word of warning about wireless WPA-PSK encryption keys

[Peter Childs]

On 8 October 2010 11:28, Peter Childs <pchilds at bcs.org> wrote:
> On 8 October 2010 11:02, Michael E. Rentell
> <michael.rentell at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>>
>> On 08/10/10 10:51, James Morris wrote:
>>>
>>> My BtHomeHub says the following:
>>>
>>> "Between 8 and 63 characters (which can be letters, numbers and
>>> punctuation)."
>>>
>>> So I decided to include the following symbols in my encryption key: `£#*})
>>>
>>> DONT!
>>>
>>>
>>> James.
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Kent mailing list
>>> Kent at mailman.lug.org.uk
>>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/kent
>>>
>>
>> Presumably because they are all special to the English keyboard variant and
>> not recognised internationally? Dunno - just a thought.
>> MikeR
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Kent mailing list
>> Kent at mailman.lug.org.uk
>> https://mailman.lug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/kent
>>
>
> I think this has some thing to do with the use of non-ascii characters, like £
>
> Anything outside the basic ASCII range (it good old 7 bit ascii) can
> have several different ways of being encoded
>
> In Extended Ascii a £ can have different codes depending on which
> ascii table you using, (ISO8859) Generally its A3 and that's its code
> in UTF. but somtimes its prefixed by a 0x27 (Escape) and sometimes its
> not, depending on your file format. so you need to be a bit careful,
> its a bit like the Carriage Return, Line Feed issue between windows
> and unix and macs. and why the utility dos2unix is needed.
>
> Peter.
>

PS.

In short do not use any characters outside basic ascii in passwords,
(unless you know want to make a system so secure you can only get in
using select selection of hardware/software), and in the case of wifi
find something easy to type in on a mobile phone.... Yes that means
limit your self to what you can type in using predictive texting,
numbers and letters and basic puncutation, and yes prefer letters like
ADGJMPTW, due to the number of wift smart phone's that you may want
you on wifi now...

Peter