Kindle Fire Wifi password too short

Haggisman

Haggisman

Haggisman

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Just had a user call me saying they're having problems connecting to our Wifi network on their new Kindle Fire. They're putting in the correct key, but keep getting a "password too short" message. A quick Google has revealed that this is a common problem, and that the Kindle is actually configured not to accept passwords under 8 characters long.

Please can someone re-assure me that a company as big as Amazon are not so <expletive deleted> short-sighted and stupid as to actually have done this, and give me a fix?

And no - increasing the length of the wifi password is not an option, it's already 8 characters and there's no way I'm going round our 6 routers, 40 odd laptops and 30 odd mobiles to reset the password on every single one just because some company decides their way is best.
 
Have no advice to offer other than I really hate this too, even when creating an account.

'6t#E' is more secure than 'password1'. Length has nothing to do with it.
 
Russinating said:
Have no advice to offer other than I really hate this too, even when creating an account.

'6t#E' is more secure than 'password1'. Length has nothing to do with it.
Click to expand...

Nope.

Length is important due to brute force cracking, there are significantly less combinations with 6t#E.

The only reason password1 is less secure is because it's obvious.
 
Russinating said:
Which is impossible seeing as 99% of websites will (or should) lock you out after a handful of incorrect attempts.
Click to expand...

You = Single IP Address.

Then it's the fact this is connecting to the WiFi, which may not lock you out after a certain amount of incorrect attempts.
 
Seems a bit odd that if 8 characters is the supposed minimum yet your password is 8 that this would be the issue.

Are you 100% certain they're entering the details correctly?
 
Russinating said:
Have no advice to offer other than I really hate this too, even when creating an account.

'6t#E' is more secure than 'password1'. Length has nothing to do with it.
Click to expand...

This is the future:

password_strength.png
 
andshrew said:
Seems a bit odd that if 8 characters is the supposed minimum yet your password is 8 that this would be the issue.

Are you 100% certain they're entering the details correctly?
Click to expand...

Yup, and in fact I tried it myself! It's not even getting to the point where it's trying to connect, it's the device itself saying it's too short.
 
I don't think its strictly part of the spec but a lot of operating systems don't accept less than 8 characters.

Have you tried putting a space after the last character?
 
Rusty! said:
This is the future:

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/password_strength.png
Click to expand...

All that's still based on brute force working though. I'm not a security expert but I know most sites lock you out after ~5 incorrect tries (regardless of IP address, just 5 attempts on the same account).

My personal password top tip is car registrations and postcodes. Easy to remember because you know them already but completely random. Stack 2 together and you'll have something like e561wepb52tha. Gobbeldy-gook to anyone but you.

Most of us can remember 2 or more postcodes and the same for car registrations too.

Sorry, this is way OT now :D
 
Russinating said:
All that's still based on brute force working though. I'm not a security expert but I know most sites lock you out after ~5 incorrect tries (regardless of IP address, just 5 attempts on the same account).
Click to expand...

That's assuming the site is functioning correctly though. The attacker could be working server side, or even better have an offline copy of the hashes. In that case password length is going to make a big difference.

As with a lot of security issues the solutions come from diversity. Passwords should ideally be complex AND long.
 
WPA2 needs to be 8 characters or higher, I know you said yours is but I don't understand the rant in the first two paragraphs of the thread in that case as it's obviously not Amazon being short sighted it's some other issue.
 
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