Possibility to force a "weak" wifi password

[philtodd]

Is there a way to force a "weak" wifi password on Vodafone's router? Vodafone just had my 80 year old mum go crawl on the floor to hard reset her router to try & fix a VOIP problem. That reset her wifi settings to their original settings and as you'd expect, no devices will connect. It didn't fix the VOIP issue either. Trying to put in the wifi details she had, the router is telling her that the old 21 character password is too weak and won't accept it. That leaves her with Alexas, smart lights, Ring doorbell, TV, phone, & tablet all to reconfigure and at her age, it's never going to happen. I'd chuck the Vodafone router in the bin if it wasn't necessary for the VOIP line. The wifi password was accepted in the past on the same router, so either something has been updated in the router firmware, or broadband app such that it will no longer allow it.

[LENNO1]

Hoping that somebody can provide some more input on this…could it be the Ultra Hub firmware forcing the 12 characters? My password complies with all other security requirements it is just a couple of characters short. Would the firmware reset make a difference?

[billgnoe]

This sort of thing is infuriating. I had a similar experience changing ISP once. Had to go around the house re-registering smart plugs. Password policies are becoming increasingly ridiculous.

[Cynric]

@billgnoe  Password policies are set because some unpleasant people are hacking into routers and turning them into devices that are being used to attack important systems and/or hacking your personal devices. Smart devices and other IoT things in your house are well known to be poorly secured and can also be used as a vector to hack your PCs and phones. When you get some free time look at your router logs and see what the firewall blocks, then copy their IP address and put it into abuseipdb.com to see what has been reported about that address. 

[LENNO1]

@philtodd did the factory reset work for your mother’s situation?

[philtodd]

I haven't tried it yet. I live 300 miles away and need to go there to sort it out myself. Talking through these things with her, I get descriptions such as "the thing at the top isn't where it normally is". I'll probably try to have a password that matches and exceeds their requirements.

However, the fact that Voda still haven't fixed her VOIP issues means I'll be ditching them as a provider at the earliest opportunity. Customer Support shouldn't be called that. Asking me security questions such as what are the last 2 digits of her sort code when it's clear that I'm not the person paying the bill are just ridiculous. My father's care alarm has been unplugged for 4 days now at their request which is a risk in itself.

[LENNO1]

@Cynric do you happen to know whether the chipset firmware on the UltraHub has the 12 character requirement - in which case resetting to factory reset would not help…

[Cynric]

@LENNO1 Not a clue, that kind of thing is hidden. However you may be able to get past it by disconnecting from the internet and performing a factory reset which should reload the default firmware from ROM. This is not guaranteed.

[LENNO1]

@Jayach  I just saw in another thread that you tried this without success on your router? Did I understand correctly? If it does not work on yours I do not think I will bother trying it on the Ultra, I would spend even more time in vain. In which case I think I will have to give up and spend a Sunday opening up back boxes to get to my smart switches….and all the ring devices…really annoying.  I do see the benefit of a better password but it should be my choice, not theirs. 
I changed to Vodafone because Sky broadband could not get my (admittedly very smart device heavy) household to operate reliably - they gave up after sending an engineer out. At first sight, WiFi and indeed the overall connection looks better with the Vodafone Ultra Hub. Certainly better reach and somewhat higher speed.

[Jayach · Accepted solution]

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@LENNO1 wrote:

@Jayach  I just saw in another thread that you tried this without success on your router? Did I understand correctly? 

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Not sure what thread that was, but after I factory reset my THG3000 to see if it would get the new firmware someone else mentioned on the forum (it did) I was unable to set my chosen Wi-Fi password (8 digits including upper and lower case letters and numbers) via the routers interface, but fortunately I found I was able to set it via the app. (4.6.7)

The app has since automatically updated to 5.0.2, but it still seems to allow 8 character passwords for the Wi-Fi.

[LENNO1]

So the router interface GUI asked for 12 characters even before reconnecting to the internet and updating the firmware? As mentioned before, the App solution did not work for the Ultra Hub, even Android 4.6.7 asks for 12 characters.