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Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

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Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#181
post #78
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A 63 character password with ten dictionary words is on average much easier to type than a 16 character random ASCII printable string, especially on phone keyboards.

Not on my switch or home entertainment system though.

The PS4 might be a pain (though I haven't tried the gesture typing feature), but the Switch has a touchscreen so there's no issue there.

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#183

Most ISP put this kind of QR code on the provided "modem" in France with the default Wifi password of the device. I love QR code. I think it should be everywhere. All legal documents and forms should have one. All supermarket bills should have one. It's a fantastic way to transition from paper to bits. Unfortunately most users have no idea what it is. They don't know what a URL is, so a QR code is out of the question…

Current Android WiFi list has a dedicated QR Code button next to it, so it should become more accessible in half a year when most people are on Android 10

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#184
post #159
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the 10 dictionary words might be less secure than 16 random characters. xkcd estimates a word has 11 bits of entropy.

Your math is off. Even if you take the 11-bit estimate (if you use something like diceware you get 13 bits), 10 words give you 110 bits. Meanwhile there are 95 ASCII printables, 16 of them give you a maximum of 105 bits, and usually people don’t use the full range (ambiguity, especially painful to type, etc.) & don’t generate a uniformly random string, which means you’re getting fewer than that. Even 95 is an optimis…

I said "might be", and someone might estimate a word to have 10 bits of entropy. And you previously said dictionary words, not random dictionary words, so a human choosing those words might choose words that relate to each other.

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The largest QR code in the standard, "version 40" - can only store 3 kilobytes at the lowest level of error correction and 1.2 kilobytes at the highest level [1]. And that's a pretty huge QR code [2] My back-of-the-envelope calculations say you'd need 61 bits per line on a receipt just to encode UPC, quantity and price. So the largest QR code would only allow 19-50 lines. And that's without including data like the st…

Seems like the obvious thing would be to have the QR code contain a "receipt ID" (UUID?) in a URL. When the QR code is scanned, the browser opens to the URL, the remote side takes your "receipt ID", and presents you with a list of all the items you purchased. I can't imagine any decent-sized retailer isn't already maintaining records like this.

See, one of the useful properties of a paper receipt is that, once you receive it, you can be fairly confident about the ~one way you're going to lose it

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#186
This can be helpful on devices which have a display device but no keyboard to help users connect during first-time setup.

Example: https://github.com/aderusha/HASwitchPlate/blob/master/Docume...

For this project, on first boot the device creates an AP, then displays a QR code containing SSID and key (along with text version of the same) that the user can connect to. Upon connection a captive portal will redirect the user to the configuration page, allowing the user to select the desired SSD and configure other essential values.

If you have a phone handy, just scan the display, accept the prompt to connect, and the next thing you see if the configuration page popping up as Apple and Android detect it as a login page.

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#187

Most ISP put this kind of QR code on the provided "modem" in France with the default Wifi password of the device. I love QR code. I think it should be everywhere. All legal documents and forms should have one. All supermarket bills should have one. It's a fantastic way to transition from paper to bits. Unfortunately most users have no idea what it is. They don't know what a URL is, so a QR code is out of the question…

Are you not concerned that QR code’s are just completely opaque URLs asking to be clicked? Do you confidently click on URLs in spam emails? Of course not since we all know URLs can point to malicious payloads. So why should we love QR code’s that could just as easily do the same. If I’m a spammer trying to get people to click on my bogus links in my email messages, why wouldn’t I also print those same URLs as QR code…

plenty of scanners allow you to decode a code & show the url or whatever is encoded in it without opening the link & give you options so I wouldn't be concerned at all.

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#188
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because urls have letters & words in english that I can read and determine if the website is authentic or not as opposed to QR code that no human can read? Have you never come across phishing scams that looked eerily authentic only to be clued in by the fake url? I can read the URL before going to the website, and unless QR codes have a step where you have to manually confirm going to the url provided by the code (mo…

Qr code readers show you the url, you have push a button to navigate to it. So it's no different than having it copied manually. Not that it matters much for most users, as I said earlier, they blindly type url. They have no idea what it is. You could put a warning saying "are you sure, this is going to kill your mother and steal all your money" and people would click on it if it's easy to do.

Microsoft did that research. Well, they didn't propose to kill anybody's mother but the test participants used their real bank credentials and Microsoft tested different behaviours in IE to see what would deter users from giving these credentials to a bogus site having accepted a task to log in and perform some basic operation.

Nothing.

Nothing deterred the users. Warning dialogs were clicked past, obvious problems or mismatched information was ignored. The only way to stop users from giving their credentials to bad guys was what I call Brick Wall UX. The browser has to stubbornly refuse to let you do it. Unable to complete their task the user at last gives up.

This is a teachable moment. Your users are probably not going to be smarter, better informed or more cautious at least on average than in this test.

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#189
post #95
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish we could encode PGP public keys with them, but it's still too much data. That would be a neat way of exchanging a key.

How big is your pgp public key? Mine is under 4K in ascii and can definitely fit in a QR code. If you use a crypto atm it will print out your wallet’s private and sometimes public keys as QR codes.

4K is around the point where some devices will start to have issues scanning. Also, crypto wallets won’t usually give you the private key, instead they’ll give you the 12 word BIP39 seed phrase which will be around 70-80 bytes.

Re: Encoding your WiFi access point password into a QR code

#190

Most ISP put this kind of QR code on the provided "modem" in France with the default Wifi password of the device. I love QR code. I think it should be everywhere. All legal documents and forms should have one. All supermarket bills should have one. It's a fantastic way to transition from paper to bits. Unfortunately most users have no idea what it is. They don't know what a URL is, so a QR code is out of the question…

Current Android WiFi list has a dedicated QR Code button next to it, so it should become more accessible in half a year when most people are on Android 10

This data [1] from google is a bit old (from May 2019), but shows about 10% on Android 9, and maybe a third on Android 8+; to get 50%+ (the common interpretation of most) you're looking at Android 7+, and that was released three years before the stats. Maybe, if uptake of 10 is as good as 7+, we'll see most people on Android being able to use this in 2022.

[1] https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/

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