Revealing your WLAN password using netsh and PowerShell

I have for a very long time tried to explain to people that network security using pre shared keys is a false feeling of security (you should look at PKI based solutions instead )! Many people seems to think that you must have one of those evil hacking tools (that your antivirus probably will detect) to be able to get your password for your WLAN from your computer in a clear text format. But that is incorrect, we can actually do this with built in tools in Windows.

For example, the following one liner is using netsh to reveal your WLAN password and is using PowerShell to sort out the security information and dumps it into a text file in the folder that your are executing the command. This command should be executed in an elevated PowerShell prompt.

netsh wlan show profiles name="the_name_of_your_network_profile_which_is_usually_the_ssid" key=clear | Select-Object -last 8 | Out-File -Filepath .\wlan_security_settings.txt

// Fredrik “DXter” Jonsson

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