17-08-2021

  1. How to find a Wi-Fi password with Terminal on Mac. The Mac Terminal is a command line system that gives you greater control of the operating system. It's also the more advanced way to find a saved.
  2. The WPA2 password is blank. Did you try that?? Setup the password by using ethernet. This is often necessary because Apple make the airport utility do dumb things. With ethernet plugged in open the airport utility. Click on the airport extreme and click edit on the page that opens. Go to the wireless tab and set a WPA2 Personal password.

Last week's feature explaining why passwords are under assault like never before touched a nerve with many Ars readers, and with good reason. After all, passwords are the keys that secure Web-based bank accounts, sensitive e-mail services, and virtually every other facet of our online life. Lose control of the wrong password and it may only be a matter of time until the rest of our digital assets fall, too.

Take, for example, the hundreds of millions of WiFi networks in use all over the world. If they're like the ones within range of my office, most of them are protected by the WiFi Protected Access or WiFi Protected Access 2 security protocols. In theory, these protections prevent hackers and other unauthorized people from accessing wireless networks or even viewing traffic sent over them, but only when end users choose strong passwords. I was curious how easy it would be to crack these passcodes using the advanced hardware menus and techniques that have become readily available over the past five years. What I found wasn't encouraging.

Tenorshare 4uKey - Password Manager Tenorshare 4uKey - Password Manager (Mac) No.1 iOS Password Finder. Find saved Wi-Fi password on iPhone/iPad from PC/Mac(iPhone 12 and iOS/iPadOS 14.5.1 included) Recover stored websites & app login passwords; Recover Screen Time Passcode; Scan and view mail accounts, credit card information. With password managers for Mac like Keychain, you can remember your app, website, account, or WiFi passwords. Find Passwords Using Keychain Keychain is a built-in password manager, which stores different types of Mac passwords.

First, the good news. WPA and WPA2 use an extremely robust password-storage regimen that significantly slows the speed of automated cracking programs. By using the PBKDF2 key derivation function along with 4,096 iterations of SHA1 cryptographic hashing algorithm, attacks that took minutes to run against the recent LinkedIn and eHarmony password dumps of June would require days or even weeks or months to complete against the WiFi encryption scheme.

What's more, WPA and WPA2 passwords require a minimum of eight characters, eliminating the possibility that users will pick shorter passphrases that could be brute forced in more manageable timeframes. WPA and WPA2 also use a network's SSID as salt, ensuring that hackers can't effectively use precomputed tables to crack the code.

That's not to say wireless password cracks can't be accomplished with ease, as I learned firsthand.

I started this project by setting up two networks with hopelessly insecure passphrases. The first step was capturing what is known as the four-way handshake, which is the cryptographic process a computer uses to validate itself to a wireless access point and vice versa. This handshake takes place behind a cryptographic veil that can't be pierced. But there's nothing stopping a hacker from capturing the packets that are transmitted during the process and then seeing if a given password will complete the transaction. With less than two hours practice, I was able to do just that and crack the dummy passwords 'secretpassword' and 'tobeornottobe' I had chosen to protect my test networks.

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Brother, can you spare a deauth frame?

To capture a valid handshake, a targeted network must be monitored while an authorized device is validating itself to the access point. This requirement may sound like a steep hurdle, since people often stay connected to some wireless networks around the clock. It's easy to get around, however, by transmitting what's known as a deauth frame, which is a series of deauthorization packets an AP sends to client devices prior to it rebooting or shutting down. Devices that encounter a deauth frame will promptly rejoin an affected network.

Using the Silica wireless hacking tool sold by penetration-testing software provider Immunity for $2,500 a year, I had no trouble capturing a handshake established between a Netgear WGR617 wireless router and my MacBook Pro. Indeed, using freely available programs like Aircrack-ng to send deauth frames and capture the handshake isn't difficult. The nice thing about Silica is that it allowed me to pull off the hack with a single click of my mouse. In less than 90 seconds I had possession of the handshakes for the two networks in a 'pcap' (that's short for packet capture) file. My Mac never showed any sign it had lost connectivity with the access points.

I then uploaded the pcap files to CloudCracker, a software-as-a-service website that charges $17 to check a WiFi password against about 604 million possible words. Within seconds both 'secretpassword' and 'tobeornottobe' were cracked. A special WPA mode built-in to the freely available oclHashcat Plus password cracker retrieved the passcodes with similar ease.

It was the neighborly thing to do

Cracking such passcodes I had set up in advance to be guessed was great for demonstration purposes, but it didn't provide much satisfaction. What I really wanted to know was how much luck I'd have cracking a password that was actually being used to secure one of the networks in the vicinity of my office.

So I got the permission of one of my office neighbors to crack his WiFi password. To his chagrin, it took CloudCracker just 89 minutes to crack the 10-character, all-numerical password he used, although because the passcode wasn't contained in the entry-level, 604 million-word list, I relied on a premium, 1.2 billion-word dictionary that costs $34 to use.

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My fourth hack target presented itself when another one of my neighbors was selling the above-mentioned Netgear router during a recent sidewalk sale. When I plugged it in, I discovered that he had left the eight-character WiFi password intact in the firmware. Remarkably, neither CloudCracker nor 12 hours of heavy-duty crunching by Hashcat were able to crack the passphrase. The secret: a lower-case letter, followed two numbers, followed by five more lower-case letters. There was no discernible pattern to this password. It didn't spell any word either forwards or backwards. I asked the neighbor where he came up with the password. He said it was chosen years ago using an automatic generation feature offered by EarthLink, his ISP at the time. The e-mail address is long gone, the neighbor told me, but the password lives on.

No doubt, this neighbor should have changed his password long ago, but there is a lot to admire about his security hygiene nonetheless. By resisting the temptation to use a human-readable word, he evaded a fair amount of cutting-edge resources devoted to discovering his passcode. Since the code isn't likely to be included in any password cracking word lists, the only way to crack it would be to attempt every eight-character combination of letters and numbers. Such brute-force attacks are possible, but in the best of worlds they require at least six days to exhaust all the possibilities when using Amazon's EC2 cloud computing service. WPA's use of a highly iterated implementation of the PBKDF2 function makes such cracks even harder.

Besides changing the password every six months or so and not using a 10-digit phone number, my neighbors could have taken another important step to improve their WiFi security. WPA allows for passwords with 63 characters in them, making it possible to append four or five randomly selected words—'applesmithtrashcancarradar' for instance—that are easy enough to repeat to guests who want to use your wireless network but are prohibitively hard to crack.

Yes, the gains made by crackers over the past decade mean that passwords are under assault like never before. It's also true that it's trivial for hackers in your vicinity to capture the packets of the wireless access point that routes some of your most closely held secrets. But that doesn't mean you have to be a sitting duck. When done right, it's not hard to pick a passcode that will take weeks, months, or years to crack.

With odds like that, crackers are likely to move onto easier targets, say one that relies on the quickly guessed 'secretpassword' or a well-known Shakespearean quote for its security.

Mac Wifi Password Finder

Forgetting passwords is a basic human instinct. If you are a Mac user, Wifi is your most needed companion and often times people forget their Wifi passwords. However, they realize that they have forgotten the password only when the system prompts to enter it again or they need to enter it on some other device. So here I’m to the rescue again. In this article, I’m going to explain how to find wifi password on Mac.

Wifi

Contents

  • 2 3 Ways to Find Wifi Password on Mac
    • 2.2 2. Use Third-party Software

Why Do you need to Find Wifi Password on Mac?

There are plenty of reasons why one must know how to find wifi password on Mac PC.

Though the most common reason is that users forget the Wifi password after setting them up. Whenever users clear or clean the Mac systems, or format their system, or by mistake, the saved passwords are cleared and when they set up the connections again, they require the password. Or, when users buy a new device like iPhone or iPad, they need to nourish them with internet and hence require wifi password.

One more scenario is when a friend or acquaintance wants to connect to the same connection they are connected, they will require a password. In a similar manner, there are plenty other reasons too as when they will need the knowledge to know the wifi password on their Mac PC.

3 Ways to Find Wifi Password on Mac

I’m presenting you the simplest and easiest ways that will help you to retrieve the forgotten Wifi password in minutes. You can try them and acquire access again to the your wifi network connection. You just have to follow the stepwise guide in order to learn how to find wifi password on Mac. The methods are not complexly made for computer geeks but, casual users can apply the too comfortably. Only knowing these will put you ahead of millions of other Mac users.

1. Use KeyChain Access

One of the simplest ways to Find WiFi Password on Mac OS without terminal is by using KeyChain Access.

KeyChain is Apple’s password management system in Mac OS X. KeyChain Access stores passwords of the Wi-Fi networks along with the other passwords used on your Mac OS X including your mail, vault, emails, calendars, etc.

You can simply use KeyChain Access to retrieve any lost password within few clicks. Follow these steps in order to find Wifi password on your Mac:

Step-1: Firstly open Spotlight search and type KeyChain Access in it. Keychain Access window will open then.

Step-2: Now see through the left side panel on the screen and click on Passwords under Category menu.

Step-3: Locate the network for which you want to view the password from the list and double-click on it. You can also seek help from the search bar.

Step-4: In the newly popped window, click on the Show Password check box.

Step-5: Then you will be prompted to enter your System or Administrator’s username and password. Type the required username and password and then click on Allow.

Step-6: Another new window will appear then and you can view the password for the certain network in it.

If you are unaware of what username and password you should use, go to Finder and then click on the Home icon from the sidebar. The Home folder name and username will always be same.
Done. You have successfully retrieved the saved wifi password on your Mac. You can either note it down somewhere or just capture the screen if you are lazy like me.

2. Use Third-party Software

If you want to find wifi password on mac without Keychain then this is what you need to do;

There are always several applications or softwares available in the Mac App Store to perform various tasks. Password Management is a task that not everyone master perennially. Therefore, I’m telling you about some applications that will do the work for you. They will manage and recover the passwords saved on your Mac without asking for any maintenance.

(i) 1Password for Mac

1Password for Mac is a simple and elegant password manager that everyone needs. It can comfortably organize the security information. You can save and fill passwords, and they will be available for you whenever you need them. Follow these steps in order to setup 1Password on your Mac PC:

Step-1: Download and install the 1Password application from here.

Step-2: Launch 1Password. Grant the permissions it needs and follow the instructions present on your screen to set it up.

Step-3: Once set up successfully, it will automatically save all the passwords and usernames you use in your PC. You can access them anytime just by using 1Password.

(ii) RememBear

RememBear is one amazing and beautifully designed password manager available for Mac, Windows, iOS and Android operating systems. Using RememBear on Mac will help you to manage all your passwords in a simple manner. The most beautiful feature of RememBear is that when you generate a new password, an animation plays out which turns from a shivering sheep towards a roaring bear as the password is strengthened. Coupled with this, there many other features too. This application is a must try. Follow these steps in order to use RememBear:

Mac Wifi Password Finder Tool

Step-1: Download and install RememBear from here.

Step-2: Launch the application and follow the instructions present on your screen. The interface is actually very simple.

(iii) Disk Drill

If you are one among the people who save their wifi and other passwords in a text document but accidentally it got deleted, this is the perfect solution for you. Disk Drill is a great data recovery software for Mac. It lets you restore the things that you deleted knowingly or unknowingly. Follow these steps in order to use Disk Drill.

Step-1: Download and install Disk Drill from here.

Step-2: Open Disk Drill and select the storage where the document with passwords was saved.

Step-3: Click on the Recover button and let the software scan the content.

Step-4: Then locate the document from the list of recoverable files and recover it.

3. Use Terminal

Another way to gain access to the saved wifi passwords on Mac is to use Terminal. Follow these steps in order to learn how to find wifi password on Mac using Terminal:

Step-1: Go to the Terminal window and then type the following command:
security find-generic-password -ga “WIFI_NAME” | grep “password:”
Don’t press Enter now, you have to do it later.

Step-2: Replace WIFI_NAME with the exact name of the Wifi network of which you want to find the password. Now press Enter.

Step-3: You will be prompted to enter your administrator’s username and password. Do it and press Enter.

Step-4: View the password that has appeared on the screen and note it down for future uses.

Mac Wifi Password Finder Free

Conclusion

Finding saved wifi password on Mac is a pretty simple task if you know exactly how to. So these were the 3 best and simple methods to find saved wifi password on Mac. I’d suggest you using KeyChain Access instead of the third-party software for security purposes. The eventual method also works on the base of KeyChain, so it is quite good too. Hope you found what you were searching for. For any queries, comment down in the comments section below.

Mac Wifi Password Finder Without

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