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shiherlis's profile

Wednesday, December 8th, 2021 12:46 AM

Long Password Length Question

Let me preface my question by stating I am not one to discourage password length. However long one feels is most secure is the length one should use. But is it not cumbersome to enter a 32-61 character Wi-Fi password whenever you add new devices? I recently set up just three new devices (Roku, Apple TV 4K, and new phone), and with just 16 characters, I felt the fatigue setting in. And if a device somehow loses its password (which happens every once in a while), I cannot imagine reconnecting numerous devices with a password of that length. How are the experiences with those who have passwords that fall into the above category?

175 Messages

3 years ago

ATV has a simplisafe app!?  or you mean any and all apps, devices in general?  

I don't ever have to put in my wifi password into the devices.... and if i do it's one at a time that happens to need it.... 

i'm more annoyed that i have to keep typing out my appleID password when making purchases!  lol!

739 Messages

@toastie

ATV has a simplisafe app!?

Not that I know. Apologies if the formatting of my post did not translate coherently, I have not felt well lately.

At least, there are some applications where you'd ideally only need to type in the password once - like to register a WiFi network on your device.

The above quote is what I was referring to.

The mentioned devices were new, and I had to register/add them to my network for the first time. Do you not have to enter your router's Wi-Fi key/password when connecting a new device to your home network, toastie?

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

3 years ago

There's certainly some benefit to longer passwords.

 

One of the 'easier' way to hack into an account is the bruteforce method. That is, a computer program guesses every possible combination and tries them all. So every character added multiplies the number of possibilities exponentially, making bruteforcing way more difficult even for today's super-powered computers.

 

But you're right, the longer a password is, the more cumbersome and impractical it becomes to type in. At least, there are some applications where you'd ideally only need to type in the password once - like to register a WiFi network on your device.

 

Personally, I feel like there's also a diminishing return when it comes to length. Sure, a 128-character password is HUGELY more secure than a 20-character password. But the shorter one is already going to take months, or even years to crack. So just using the shorter password and changing it frequently works for me.

7 Messages

3 years ago

When I set up my Simplisafe base station, I opened my password manager, copied the wifi password, opened the Simplisafe app, pasted the password. No typing required. I only had to enter the wifi password once for the base station, the rest of the devices connect through it.

That method works 90% of the time, it's very rare that I have to manually type the wifi password.

(edited)

739 Messages

@TheCat

Interesting. I upgraded to SS3 in February 2018 and have input my password via Keypad each time. I cannot recall what happened in recent months, but I had to add my Base Station back to my network, and it was the same process. I did not know there was any other option available, to be honest.

I never thought about copying and pasting as I do not use a password manager (I utilize a physical Security Key to protect my accounts and a ledger in my safe). As such, I do not trust my password being unencrypted, even for the time it would take to enter.

I appreciate your response as it can help moving forward.

(edited)

3 years ago

Use a pass phrase. It's easy enough. It's all a string of bytes in the end.

I found this thread because I'm annoyed Simplisafe thinks it gets to dictate that my wifi networks passwords should be 31 characters or less, despite the 802.11i specification allowing up to 63!

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