Re: airport and encryption

[Adam Done <mlist@donestudios.com>]

On Fri, 2004-09-17 at 20:00, James Gibbs wrote:
> On Thu, 2004-09-16 at 18:13, Adam Done wrote:
> > I have been setting up my wireless using apples airport.  So far I have
> > been able to access the base station with an open network but when I try
> > to access with a close network and 40bit encryption I am locked out.
> > 
> > 
> > in the /etc/network/interfaces 
> > 	wireless_essid net-name
> > 	wireless_key s:password xxxxx
> > 
> > but when I do restart the network interfaces I get this error
> > 
> > #  /etc/init.d/networking restart
> > Setting up IP spoofing protection: rp_filter.
> > Reconfiguring network interfaces...Error : unrecognised wireless request
> > "xxxxx"
> > done.
> > 
> > 
> > I am at a loss to access a close protected airport base station.  I did
> > a man iwconfig to learn how to use the password.  Does anyone have any
> > good sujestions?
> > 
> > -Adam
> > 
> 
> I had a similar problem with my iBook 500 with graphite base station
> using static connection and 40bit encryption. The "wireless_key s:xxxxx"
> line always gave me an error. I don't know if it was too old firmware or
> what. My solution was to open the Airport Admin program in OS X to
> configure the base station. Click where it says "password" to see what
> the password key is in hex. Then change the wireless_key line to
> "wireless_key ABCDEF0123", rather than entering as a string. Also, don't
> know if it matters, but my interfaces file uses "wireless-key" rather
> than "wireless_key".
> 
> James


I found the hex as you explained and then in linux I 

# iwconfig eth1 key ABCDEF0123
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A)
    invalid argument"ABCDEF0123"

eth1      IEEE 802.11-DS  ESSID:"wnet"  Nickname:"HERMES I"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462GHz  Access Point:
01:02:03:04:05:06   
          Bit Rate:11Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   Sensitivity:1/3  
          Retry limit:4   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:2347 B   
          Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xx
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=38/92  Signal level=-59 dBm  Noise level=-97 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:12  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

This is with apple's orrig airport card on a G4 powerbook and the key I 
took from above gave me this.

# iwconfig eth1 key xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx
eth:1 new Link status: Disconnected

eth1: New Link status: Connected (0001)