Wifi emergency. Not my router, password too short for Apple devices D-:

August 28, 2013 5:41 AM

Any hacks to force an Apple device to accept a 7-character wifi password?

I am staying at an AirBnB, so this is not my router and I can't change its password myself. Another thing I cannot do is connect any of the devices I brought with me for work to the Wi-Fi, because Apple doesn't accept passwords shorter than eight characters long.

I've read all I could find on the web and it seems like the safest, if not the only, fix is to change the router password. I am trying to reach the owner to see if that can happen, but she's on vacation and not likely to reply.

I understand Apple devices work like that for security, but I am dying here. My last hope is that one of you will know a gentle hack that I could use on my MacBook To temporarily bypass the 8-character password requirement.

I don't have much hope, but thought I'd try asking anyway. Thanks!

posted by Opal to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

Best answer: Try selecting "Other..." in the AirPort wifi menu and manually entering the wireless network name, security type and password.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 5:59 AM on August 28, 2013

Best answer: Yup - the forums suggest forgetting the network and then manually entering wifi sid, encryption type and password.
posted by MuffinMan at 6:07 AM on August 28, 2013

You're interrupting someone's holiday for this?

afaik The eight character limit is in the spec, the password can't be less. Try choosing a different encryption type.
posted by devnull at 6:55 AM on August 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

Best answer: If the password is really only 7 characters then it is probably WEP security, so I would first try manually adding the network as discussed above. If that doesn't work, it appears that you can use an online WEP key generator to convert the passphrase into the hexadecimal equivalent, which will be much longer. I haven't ever tried this, but you may be able to then use the hex equivalent as the password on your devices (with a $ character at the start to signal that it is in hex).

But for the MacBook, I would just plug in directly to the router. A basic Ethernet cable shouldn't be too hard to find near where you're staying if you don't have one already.
posted by stopgap at 8:09 AM on August 28, 2013 [1 favorite]

You could also plug in the Macbook as stopgap suggested, and then create an ad-hoc wireless network from the Macbook, replete with an wireless name of your choosing and proper WPA2 security.
posted by Sunburnt at 9:01 AM on August 28, 2013

You might also be able to change the wifi password yourself. What kind of router is it? Search for default IP address and username password. It may even be unsecured, and reachable at an address like:

http://10.0.0.1
http://192.168.0.1/
posted by TonyRobots at 9:54 AM on August 28, 2013

Response by poster: You're interrupting someone's holiday for this?

Ya know, I am paying 200 dollars a night to stay at a stranger's place because she had "very good internet." I am interrupting her holiday with all my might.

Thanks everyone for the advice. I am connected now.
posted by Opal at 9:14 PM on August 28, 2013 [2 favorites]

Could you say how you fixed the problem, so that others who read this can fix their problem too?
posted by devnull at 3:40 AM on August 29, 2013