To secure wpa/wpa2 keys from brute-force or dictionary-attacks, it is evident to use strong, that means long and purely randomly generated keys, which are in addition generated with a strong algorithm.
WPA/WPA2 limits the length of passwords to 63 digits, including upper/lowercase and special characters – so that’s what we are trying to generate….
There is a versatile tool for Ubuntu available – apg.
Install it via
sudo apt-get install apg
Now, let’s use the full length available for WPA2 and generate some passwords with apg using:
apg -m 63 -x 63 -a1
To parse the keys automatically into a file, so that you can store and copy&paste the password, use this command:
apg -m 63 -x 63 -a 1 > password.txt
Both commands will generate 6 very strong and purely random passwords. You can use the file later to copy&paste the password into your network settings.
One thing:
surprisingly, some passwords include (though ASCII) characters, which might give you some problems within the network configuration, especially those, which cause a special behavior of the bash. To be sure, that your generated password won’t cause those problems, paste the password in this command:
echo "your-pass-word-with-special-characters"
If the displayed password is different than the pasted or especially, if the bash displays a syntax error, then change the displayed errornous character with for instance #.
