That's a bit like the protocol some smart lightbulbs use to connect to Wi-Fi networks, which is simultaneously genius and depressingly dystopian. TIL that Wi-F

That's a bit like the protocol some smart lightbulbs use to connect to Wi-Fi networks, which is simultaneously genius and depressingly dystopian. TIL that Wi-Fi encryption is vaguely akin to a VPN, in that it encrypts at the TCP/UDP/etc level, not the IP level, and TIL also that Wi-Fi encryption (which is a stream cipher) does not alter packet lengths. Soooo, when you "pair" such a lightbulb using this protocol, the companion app is actually just spraying empty packets with specific packet lengths to 255.255.255.255, and the lightbulb's ESP8266 (or similar) is sitting in monitor mode and circularly-logging the lengths of the packets it sees into a buffer in memory until it sees a valid setup message. If you presume the setup message is protected by some sort of key you'd be sorely mistaken :D your Wi-Fi SSID and PSK are available in plaintext to anything and everything that happens to be in monitor mode at the time. Like I said, genius yet very very hard to not see as deliberately chaotic-evil.