WEP Key recovery

I forgot the WEP key for my wireless router and the reset button on my router doenst work. How do I reveal the network password that was typed in windows XP for this wireless network?

Reply to
Kosmo Kramer
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Navigate to the router's admin page (192.168.0.1 or similar) with your browser and look at the WEP key?

Guy

Reply to
Bigguy

Doubtful. More like you don't actually have access to the router or permission to change it.

Reply to
Bill Kearney

If it is indeed your wireless router, what you can do is go to the device's setup page, change the WEP password, and then change the password in WinXP to match.

That will, of course, require another medium to connect to the wireless router. Ethernet and/or USB depending on the make/model of the device.

No ethernet or USB ports? Then take the wireless router to a friend's house and hook it up to his system to set it up.

Reply to
Spender

It'd be a pretty rubbish router that stored and displayed a security password in plaintext.

Reply to
Mark McIntyre

On Fri, 13 Oct 2006 23:09:05 +0100, Mark McIntyre wrote in :

Since the password can be changed, there's no real value to keeping it obscured (unless you're just worried about someone looking over your shoulder:). The real security is from the admin password.

Reply to
John Navas

Sure there's a value. It's a typing test. If you can blindly type the WEP key twice, while seeing only asterisks on the screen, then you have passed the manufacturers typing test and are therefore qualified to operate a wireless router. Microsoft also has a similar typing test in Wireless Zero Config, where the user is required to blindly type the WEP key TWICE in or order to qualify.

In this case, the OP couldn't disclose the model number of the router. Therefore, I suspect they will fail the typing test and be rejected as a qualified wireless router operator.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 01:26:41 GMT, Jeff Liebermann wrote in :

Thank God for copy-and-paste!

LOL! (Thanks -- I needed that.)

Reply to
John Navas

I always think "who thought of this?".

Reply to
George

That often happens when it is in someone else's building...

Reply to
George

On Sat, 14 Oct 2006 10:25:57 -0400, George wrote in :

New hire fresh out of school. :)

Reply to
John Navas

George hath wroth:

A better question would be "what were they thinking" or "was any testing done on this"?

Wireless Zero Config could only have been written by someone that didn't understand why one types the password in twice on an access point (in case you mistyped it, you get locked out of the access point), but doesn't understand why it's not necessary to do the same for the client.

The same typing test also appears for licensing the various Microsoft products. It's long enough to constitute a barrier to installation for anyone that can't type. I'm absolutely certain that this was intentional on the part of Microsoft. Every other number, such as the product ID, has a bar code under the number but not the product serial number. I have a bar code reader (CueCat) in the office that could easily read a bar code serial number, but MS insists that I type it in by hand. Such an omission could only be intentional.

Reply to
Jeff Liebermann

You know you can tell MS products to read the serial no from a file, right? Thats how one does unattended installation.

(and yes, I agree its intentional, its to force a real human to install the s/w, as an anti-piracy measure. Don't ask me why that would work, its as sane as typing in the password twice).

Reply to
Mark McIntyre

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