Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog

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Tue, May 20 2008 at 7:30AM PDT • Contributed by: Anonymous

If you hold down the option key while selecting a secure wireless network (WPA only) from the AirPort menu bar icon, the system brings up a different dialog box. Instead of asking for the ASCII password, it lets you enter a hexadecimal password (noting you need exactly 64 characters) instead.

[robg adds: This worked for me in 10.5, but I'm not sure if if works in 10.4 as well, as my 10.4 test system isn't AirPort equipped.]

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The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.

Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog
Authored by: magir on Tue, May 20 2008 at 8:01AM PDT

What's even more interesting: Pressing option before opening the Airport menu extra! You'll get additional info for the currently selected airport network - quite interesting and I think there isn't a separate hint for that, yet.

Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog
Authored by: tobyvoss on Tue, May 20 2008 at 12:37PM PDT

i can confirm that both the hint and the above reply both work in 10.4.11

Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog
Authored by: imperialline on Tue, May 20 2008 at 9:44AM PDT

Whoa! Who is in the right mind would use hex password instead of the human readable, user friendly ascii password.

Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog
Authored by: mmnw on Wed, May 21 2008 at 5:25AM PDT

There are some routers out there, mostly older ones, that do not allow to use a custom ASCII passphrase. Even worse, I once encountered one, that used a custom algorithm to calculate a HEX code from an ASCII string. So this is a valuable hint with older or weird wireless hardware.

Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog
Authored by: imperialline on Wed, May 21 2008 at 8:40AM PDT

This was not what I really meant. Of course, if you have no choice then you must use hex password as I did before the WPA and other sophisticated wireless security stuffs came out.

However, this hint is pervert, the author of this hint wants to use hex passward for WPA wireless as the following excerpt shows what he says:

"...selecting a secure wireless network (WPA only) ..."

Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog
Authored by: jyu on Tue, May 20 2008 at 11:59AM PDT

In the old days, one of the Apple tech doc recommend using $ prefix when entering hex passwords. Does it still work?

Enter hex password in AirPort connection dialog
Authored by: Beorn on Tue, May 20 2008 at 12:04PM PDT

You can also just use the standard dialog and precede the hex string with a dollar sign ($), as mentioned in the Knowledge Base Article HT1126. This has worked for me on all previous OS X version back to at least 10.2 (I'm not sure about earlier versions, but it probably works there as well).

---
Michael

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