wpa_passphrase character woes

[Bryan Kadzban]

Jan wrote:
> characters that are allowed by windows (the plattform the owner of
> the net uses) aren't necessarily allowed within
> wpa_passphrase/linux/bash... (in my case wpa_passphrase generated the
> same passphrases for two keys like "5h7suK$f-Br_F-" and
> "5h7suK-Br_F-").

How did you invoke wpa_passphrase?  With the SSID on the command line
and the passphrase typed into wpa_passphrase's stdin?  Or did you put
the passphrase on the command line?

If you put the passphrase on the command line, your problem is that bash
did its variable substitution (just like it always does).  It's not that
the characters aren't allowed, it's that $ has a special meaning to the
shell.  Variable substitution replaced $f with the contents of the "f"
shell variable.  If "f" wasn't set to anything, $f got replaced by the
empty string, which means that wpa_passphrase would have seen exactly
what you posted for the second key.  It is therefore not surprising that
it generated the same key; it had the same inputs (SSID and ASCII
string).

Try:

wpa_passphrase SSID
5h7suK$f-Br_F-
^D

(^D means "hit control-D"; this sends EOF so wpa_passphrase stops
reading input) or:

wpa_passphrase SSID '5h7suK$f-Br_F-'

(replacing SSID with the actual SSID being used, of course, in both
cases).  You should get something different.
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