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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

Even my parents & grandparents modems/routers each have a unique password printed on the bottom! There's just no excuse for this.

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Their routers only have this feature because the internet providers who sell those routers pay for bandwidth themselves lol. If residential internet plans sold on a pay-per-byte basis you can bet routers’d still ship with non-unique passwords.

Nah, it's to deflect customer support contacts. Which often in the case of ISPs, results in a truck roll which is hugely expensive.

It's also the law in the EU.

Oddly enough, these default unique passwords usually are in the format of word+word+digit+digit+digit. If you look up the model, it won't take long to find the word list they use and can trivially bruteforce it.

So even then, I'd recommend changing it, or push for these companies to provide generated passwords with a much larger key space.

Idk in Romania routers come with random passwords.

https://imgur.com/a/x915ZfO

function generatePassword() { // comply with Romanian regulations return "gaGc52eP" }

This function doesn’t evaluate, something something expected expression of }, premature end of file.

I know you're making a joke but it's just HN formatting not respecting single line breaks in comments.

HN supports code format using spaces in front

    int foo()
    {
       bar();
    }

German fritzbox routers (the most common non-isp routers here, and actually very capable) have a fully random password

That's usually the wifi password, not the admin password.

Yep! But the admin password is paramount. Often it's trivial, and necessary to add your device to WiFi. The true danger in our https land is what your admin can do,

Oh speaking of which. A lot of places i rented on holidays had internet access with that default unique password. Which is a pain to type on your phone and laptop when you get there.

Did anyone think to at least try to add OCR-ing those labels on our phones to automatically enter the wifi password?

A lot of inns and B&Bs in tiny towns etc. have these complicated passwords that seem like overkill. You're probably right that they're some sort of default. Even if they're not 12345, it seems as if they could be something pretty simple and that would be fine.

QR codes?

> QR codes?

How do you change the label on the router that got installed 8 years ago and is working fine? Especially since the owner of the cabin in the woods that you just rented for the weekend is into ... renting cabins in the woods, not geekery.

> have these complicated passwords that seem like overkill. You're probably right that they're some sort of default.

It is the default. If you find their router you'll find that overkill password printed on a label on the bottom. More enlightened ISPs give you extra stickers with the same info that you can put on the fridge or somewhere like that.

We used this for our guests at home.

https://qifi.org/

Oh pretty. Now I just need to tell all the hosts in my future holidays about those :)

There is a wifi credentials QR code standard that can be used to pass the network name, and authentication details. Anyone can generate one, here's a generator app: https://www.qr-code-generator.com/solutions/wifi-qr-code/

Most modern phones recognize the standard and can be used through the native camera app.

Yes I saw it literally few days ago when visiting relative (not even airbnb just her home), so easy to do yet it never occured to me.

I have a framed wifi QR code in my house. It's great. Looks like a photo on the wall.

I should cross-stitch one.

>Did anyone think to at least try to add OCR-ing those labels on our phones to automatically enter the wifi password?

You can do that easily on iOS, I'd be surprised if Android didn't allow it as well...

Tap in the password field, tap Autofill from the popup, and tap Scan Text.

Slightly off topic, but sharing WiFi passwords on iOS is so very user friendly.

How does it work in iOS?

On Android User A taps on the wifi they are connected to and gets a QR code, and User B taps on the icon for scanning wifi QR codes, so one tap each once you are in your wifi settings.

On iOS, the guest attempts to connect and anyone with them in their contacts list is prompted to share. The common use case of a friend visiting is very simple. If you want to share a different network, there's a similar flow to the Android one: