Security Question.

tsaw7

tsaw7

New Member
I am an IST (interent service tech) for the local cable company. I have had a problem twice in the last month that I have not seen before. I will try and explain this the best I can...


I had a call for the computer not connecting to the wireless. So I went to the available networks, found their network (which was secure) and tried to connect. After a couple times of it failing, I noticed that the encryption key that it was using was only 8 characters. The encryption key for their router was 12 characters, so I changed it on the computer to what it was supposed to be. Again it did not connect. I tried to change it about 5 times with no luck. After asking the customer to try and guess what that password could be I decided to try and change the network key for the router to "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8". And it worked.

So for some reason the computer would only accept the key as 1-8. Anyone ever seen this happen?
 
It's possible that the computer connecting to the network did not support of key strength that the router was using. For example if you're connecting to the network with a card that supports 40 some odd bit give or take (i don't remember the exact number) you're going to have a key with a set number of characters. A higher bit key say 128 bit for example is going to require more characters. Just guessing here though.
 
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