Find Any WiFi Password on a Windows Computer

Find Any WiFi Password on a Windows computer

By Strictly-Software

The title is a little misleading as it doesn't bring you back to the early 2000's and let you go driving around estates with a laptop, breaking into password encrypted WiFi routers. Not that you used to need to as in most estates your computer could pick up an unlocked router or three without a problem.

This is slightly different in it allows you to find ANY password that belongs to a router your PC/Laptop has been connected to in the past.

You may not like writing things down and have had a memory slip or you haven't used the router for so long the password escapes any looks for it.

First - Find out what you can access

This bit allows us to find out all the WiFi routers such as friends routers and gadgets like Chromecast that you have forgotten the password to.

Open your command prompt in administrator mode otherwise this won't work.

Once you have your command prompt up lets find out what WiFi spots we have connected to in the past or have access to. If you were around a friends one time and connected but forgot the password then you may need to use this to re-gain it if his WiFi router is in the list.

Type the following into the prompt: netsh wlan show profiles

It should then list all the routers you have had connections to from the computer you are on.

C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan show profiles 

User profiles
-------------
    All User Profile     : Chromecast1034
    All User Profile     : BTHub4-NX23
    All User Profile     : TALKTALK-3ERA24
    All User Profile     : virginmedia8817891
    All User Profile     : strictlywifi10x
    All User Profile     : strictly-ukhorse-air

Now we have a list of spots and we pick the one we need the password for. The command is pretty similar to the preceding one it just needs the routers name added to it and the term key=clear. If you don't add this to the end then you won't get to view the password in clear text.

netsh wlan show profile BTHub4-NX23 key=clear

This will give you detailed info on the router, whether it connects automatically, authentication mode e.g WPA2 and even details of your current cost and whether you are over the data limit set by your provider.

Lets try and find the password for the connection BTHub4-NX23

C:\Windows\system32>netsh wlan show profile BTHub4-NX23 key=clear

Profile BTHub4-NX23 on interface WiFi:
=======================================================================

Applied: All User Profile

Profile information
-------------------
    Version                : 1
    Type                   : Wireless LAN
    Name                   : BTHub4-NX23
    Control options        :
        Connection mode    : Connect automatically
        Network broadcast  : Connect only if this network is broadcasting
        AutoSwitch         : Do not switch to other networks

Connectivity settings
---------------------
    Number of SSIDs        : 1
    SSID name              : "BTHub4-NX23"
    Network type           : Infrastructure
    Radio type             : [ Any Radio Type ]
    Vendor extension          : Not present

Security settings
-----------------
    Authentication         : WPA2-Personal
    Cipher                 : CCMP
    Security key           : Present
    Key Content            : r85583569z

Cost settings
-------------
    Cost                   : Unrestricted
    Congested              : No
    Approaching Data Limit : No
    Over Data Limit        : No
    Roaming                : No
    Cost Source            : Default

As you can see from the Key Content section the password for this router is r85583569z.

Open the WiFi section on your desktop and connect by adding the key and it should connect. If not you have a problem.

So if you don't like writing passwords down or just want to use your mates WiFi without spending hours hunting down where he put his WiFi routers login details then this trick can come in handy.

By Strictly-Software


© 2017 Strictly-Software

Accessing your computers external IP address from your computer without using a browser

Access your computers external IP address from your desktop without using a browser

Following on from yesterdays blog post about what can happen if you get given a new IP address and don't realise it, you might want a quick way to check your external IP address from your computer without having to open an Internet browser.

There are many "What is my IP address" sites about that show you your IP address plus other request headers such as the user-agent but you might want a quick way of seeing your external IP without having to open a browser first.

If you are using a LINUX computer it's pretty easy to use CURL or WGET to write a small script to scrape an IP checker page and return the HTML contents.

For instance in a command prompt this will return you the IP address using CURL by scraping the contents of icanhazip.com.

This site is good because it outputs the computers IP address that's accessing the URL in plain text so it means you don't have to do any reformatting at all.

curl icanhazip.com

However if you are on a Windows computer there is no simple way of getting your external IP address (the IP address your computer is seen on the outside world) without either installing Windows versions of CURL or WGET first or writing a script to do it for you using Microsoft objects.

Of course it would be nice if you could just use ipconfig from the command prompt to show your external address as well as your internal network details but unfortunately you can't do that.

As you're connected to the Internet through your router your PC isn't directly connected to the Internet.

Therefore there is no easy way you can get the IP address your ISP has assigned to your computer without seeing it from another computer on the Internet.

Therefore you can either use one of the many IP checker tools like whatismyip.com or icanhazip.com to get the details. Or you can even just click this link to search for "what is my IP address" and get Google to show you your IP address above the results.

However if you do want to do it without a browser you can write a simple VBS script to do it for you and then you can access your external IP from your desktop with a simple double click of the mouse.

How to make a VBS Script to get your computers external IP address.

1. Open notepad.
2. Copy and paste the following VBS code into a new notepad window. 
3. Save the file as "whatismyip.vbs" on to your desktop.
4. To view your IP address just double click the file icon and a Windows message box will open and show you the IP address.

The script is very simple and all it does is scrape the plain text contents of the webpage at icanhazip.com and output it in a pop-up - simples!

Option Explicit
Dim objHTTP : Set objHTTP = WScript.CreateObject("MSXML2.ServerXmlHttp")
objHTTP.Open "GET", "http://icanhazip.com", False
objHTTP.Send
Wscript.Echo objHTTP.ResponseText
Set objHTTP  = Nothing

If you really want to use this from the command line you can do it by following these steps.

1. Open a command prompt.
2. Type "cscript " leaving a space afterwards (and without the quotes!).
3. Drag the whatismyip.vbs file to the command prompt so that you have a space between cscript and the path of the file e.g C:\Documents and Settings\myname>cscript "C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Desktop\whatismyip.vbs"
4. Hit Enter.
5. The IP address will appear after some guff about the Windows Script Host Version.

The output should look something like this:

C:\Documents and Settings\
myname >cscript "C:\Documents and Settings\myname\Desktop\whatismyip.vbs"
Microsoft (R) Windows Script Host Version 5.7
Copyright (C) Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
89.42.212.239

So there you go, a LINUX and WINDOWS way of accessing your external IP address from your desktop without having to open Chrome or FireFox.