wpa_supplicant is able to use a hex string as an essid, but there is no easy way (a way easier than wpa-configsection) to use this feature with netcfg since the essid in the temporary wpa_supplicant config file is always quoted. (unquoted essid or psk means hex string, quoted is a normal string).

It could be implemented by adding a new variable 'ESSID_HEX' that will be used by netcfg if ESSID is empty. Similar to

if [[ -n $ESSID ]]; then
ESSID="\"$ESSID\""
else
ESSID=$ESSID_HEX
fi

<....>

when generating the wpa_supplicant config file, the quotes needs to be removed then:

echo "ssid=$ESSID" >> wpa.conf