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Network Shell Utility (netsh, An useful usage)

 In Windows OS, there is a command known as netsh or network shell. It is a command line utility included in Microsoft Windows NT lines of the operating system, beginning with Windows 2000. It allows local/remote network configuration as well as it can be used to display network configuration. Today, we can see how 'netsh' can be leveraged to display wireless passwords. It happens we may forget the wireless password(s) after connecting a device to many wireless networks since it gets stored as a part of the network profile. That said, we enter password for a wireless network for the first time and it gets stored, and then the next time onwards the device gets connected to the wireless network once it is available. We don't need to key in a password again. As a result, we may forget passwords and may get challenged to remember and connect to any other device. 

In this post, we will see how can we leverage netsh command to get/retrieve wireless network passwords from a device which at least got connected once to a targeted wireless network. 

Following are steps to get a wireless network password from a Windows machine that at least got connected once with the targeted network.

1. Open the command prompt

2. type netsh wlan show profiles

3. Then enter

We will get one or more wlan profiles. These profiles are wireless network profiles to which the Windows machine in the past got connected or is currently connected. 

We need to remember the profile name for which we need to get/retrieve the wireless network password.

4. Then again type the following command: netsh wlan show profiles profile-name key=clear

5 Then enter.

We will get a list of information. Under security configuration, Key Content has the password for that wireless network. It's so useful it actually stores and remembers passwords for us and we don't need to write it down on a plain piece of paper or in a digital text file.

The output may look like the below (Windows 11):



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