What is a network key in an asus router. Wi-Fi from Rostelecom: how to enter a security key

When connected to a wireless Wi-Fi networks Users are often faced with the need to enter a certain network security key. In this article we will tell you what a Wi-Fi wireless network security key is, as well as how to find out this key using the settings of the router, computer or laptop on which it is saved.

In order to understand what a security key is, you need to say a few words about the different types of Wi-Fi networks. A Wi-Fi network can be open or secure. An open network is not protected in any way and you do not need to enter any data to connect to such a network. Anyone can connect to an open network, the main thing is to be within the range of the network. This is very convenient for providing Internet access in public places. A secure network, on the contrary, is closed to casual users. Secure networks are usually used to build office, work and home wireless networks. In order to connect to such a network, you need to know a secret set of characters, which is called a key. Wi-Fi security or password.

In general, a Wi-Fi security key is a password that you need to know to connect to the network. When you connect to a secure network, the device you are using will prompt you to enter a security key or password. After entering this information, the entered password is checked for correctness and if the password is correct, then the connection occurs. If the password is incorrect, the connection is terminated.

It should be noted that there is some confusion in terms here. On some devices (for example, mobile gadgets with Android or iOS operating system) given key security is called a password. That is, the user is asked to enter a password, and he immediately understands what is required of him to connect to the network.

At the same time, laptops and computers running the Windows operating system use more correct name, namely the “security key”. The use of the term "security key" is often confusing inexperienced users, because they do not understand what is required of them.

How to find out your wireless network security key

The Wi-Fi security key is installed on the device that creates this wireless network. This could be a wireless router or hotspot Wi-Fi access. Therefore, the most reliable way to find out the Wi-Fi security key is to go to the settings of the router or access point and look.

In order to do this, you need to first connect to the network of this router. This can be done via cable or via Wi-Fi (when connected via Wi-Fi input settings may be blocked). Next you need to open any browser and enter address bar Router IP address (usually 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1).

After this, you will be asked to enter your username (login) and password. The standard login and password are often indicated on the bottom side of the router; this information is also in the instructions for the router.

After entering your username and password, you will be taken to the router’s web interface. Here you need to find a section with Wi-Fi settings. Typically this section is called Wi-Fi, Wireless network, WLAN or Wireless network. In the Wi-Fi settings section, you can find the security key required to connect.

If you have a computer on which the security key is saved, then you can do it without going into the router settings. To do this, open the Network and Sharing Center shared access" In Windows 7, to do this you need to right-click on the icon network connection or go to the “Control Panel” and open the “Network and Internet – Network and Sharing Center” section

In Windows 10, the easiest way to do this is to use the Run menu. Press the Windows-R key combination and run the command “control.exe /name Microsoft.NetworkandSharingCenter”.

In the Network and Sharing Center window, click on the Manage Wireless Networks link.

Here you need to find the required Wi-Fi network, right-click on it and go to “Properties”.

As a result, a window will appear with the properties of the selected Wi-Fi network. To view the saved security key, go to the “Security” tab and enable the “Display entered characters” option. After this, the data you need will appear in the “Network Security Key” text field.

If you do not have access to the router and do not have a saved password on your computer, then you need to contact system administrator or the Internet service provider that maintains your Wi-Fi network.

Any user knows that when trying to connect to secure wireless networks, they often receive the message “Enter your network security key.” What is this key, what is it for, how is it used, where to find it and how to identify it various methods, will be discussed further. Actually, every user already knows what it is, but perhaps they simply have no idea about the true state of affairs. In fact, after reading the material presented below, any user will no longer have all questions related to understanding the term itself and the methods used to determine such a key.

What is a network security key in general terms?

So, what is the understanding of this term? If anyone doesn’t know, the security of wireless networks is ensured by protection from unauthorized access to the network and encryption of transmitted and received data.

At the same time, the concept of a key is in no way related to the type of encryption used, but refers specifically to ensuring secure entry. As many have probably already guessed, the question of what a network security key is has only one correct answer: this is the most common access password, which is entered when prompted by the router. It can consist of any set of Latin letters, numbers and symbols.

How does this work?

In the question of what a network security key is, we cannot ignore some aspects related to how it works. The fact is that the request comes not from the wireless network itself, but from the router used (router or ADSL modem).

When you try to connect to the network defined by your computer, laptop or mobile device, a request is made from the device, which is recorded on the router. In turn, it ensures the security of wireless networks and gives you a kind of invitation to connect, but with mandatory confirmation of the access password, which in most cases, except for the use of programs that allow you to calculate the key, provides protection against unauthorized connection. We’ll look at the programs a little later, but for now let’s see how you can find out such a password in different systems and on different devices.

How to find out the network security key in Windows?

And first, let's look at Windows desktop operating systems in relation to users who, for some reason, have forgotten or lost their Wi-Fi passwords. What to do if a computer or laptop connects to the network without problems, but you need to access it from another device (for example, from a mobile device). Where can I get a network security key? This problem can be solved quite simply.

First you need to go to properties established connection, using the “Network and Sharing Center” for this. You can call it either through the RMB menu on the connection icon, or go to the corresponding section through the “Control Panel”. The properties window uses the security tab, which contains the network name and password. But it is only displayed as dots. How to find out the network security key? Yes, just check the box next to the item for displaying entered characters, and the password will appear before your eyes.

Why is this happening? Yes, only because any operating system, even with a one-time connection, saves the entered network names and passwords for them, not to mention the connection that is used by default.

Obtaining a key on the router

In principle, if this option does not suit the user for some reason, you can take a longer route by using the router’s web interface to obtain it. To do this, you need to enter the settings through any web browser by entering combinations starting with 192.168, after which either 0.1 or 1.1 is added (for non-standard router models, the addresses may differ quite significantly).

After that, go to the section wireless connection(Wireless), and then in the Security subsection, find the field labeled PSK. What is written in it is the key you are looking for. If for some reason you cannot enter the router settings, command line enter the ipconfig combination and look in the default gateway field. This is the address of the router itself.

Defining a security key in Android

We figured out what a network security key is and how to find it out in Windows. Now let's see how to perform similar procedures on mobile systems Android. Everything is a little more complicated here.

If the password is not displayed in normal form in the connection settings, you will have to look for it in system files, but to access them on the device you need to have Root rights and any file manager. In the manager, go sequentially through the Data/Music/WiFi directories, and in the last one open text document with the name wpa_supplicant.conf, after which in the text find the name of the desired network. The corresponding key will be written next to the name.

Using specialized programs

In mobile systems you can use free WiFi utility Password Hacker, which, after launch, scans all connections ever made, and after selecting the desired network displays the access password used for it on the screen.

If you need to find out the password to someone else's network, you will have to use a somewhat illegal technique called brute force. For Windows systems The most suitable utility is Aircrack-ng, and for Android systems - WIBR. Using them is quite simple, so there is no point in focusing too much on this. But keep in mind that their use, if not illegal, is at least beyond the bounds of decency.

Instead of a total

That's all for consideration of issues related to the concept of a security key. Regarding the concept itself, only one conclusion can be drawn - this is the most common access password. As for how to recognize it, I think there shouldn’t be any special questions here, since this is done quite simply in any operating system. WITH mobile devices if you do not have access rights to system directories, problems may arise, but to obtain the appropriate rights you can use, for example, a computer utility Kingo Root, which is first installed on the PC, and then installs its own driver on the mobile device, after which you will have superuser rights.

Not so long ago, it seemed that a wireless network protected using WPA2 technology was quite secure. Finding a simple key to connect is really possible. But if you install a really long key, then neither rainbow tables nor even GPU acceleration will help you fix it. But, as it turned out, you can connect to a wireless network without this - by taking advantage of a recently discovered vulnerability in the WPS protocol.

WARNING

All information is presented for educational purposes only. Penetrating into someone else's wireless network can easily be considered a criminal offense. Think with your head.

The price of simplifications

There are fewer and fewer open access points to which you do not need to enter a key to connect at all. It seems that soon they can be listed in the Red Book. If previously a person might not even know that a wireless network can be closed with a key, protecting himself from extraneous connections, then now he is increasingly being told about this possibility. Take at least custom firmware, which are produced by leading providers for popular models routers to simplify setup. You need to specify two things - login/password and... a key to protect the wireless network. More importantly, the hardware manufacturers themselves are trying to make the setup process straightforward. Thus, most modern routers support the WPS (Wi-Fi Protected Setup) mechanism. With its help, the user can set up a secure wireless network in a matter of seconds, without bothering himself at all with the fact that “you need to enable encryption somewhere else and register a WPA key.” I entered the eight-digit symbolic PIN in the system, which is written on the router, and you’re done! And here, hold on tight. In December, two researchers spoke about serious fundamental flaws in the WPS protocol. It's like a back door for any router. It turned out that if WPS is activated at the access point (which, for a moment, is enabled in most routers by default), then you can select a PIN for connection and extract the key for connection in a matter of hours!

How does WPS work?

The idea of the creators of WPS is good. The mechanism automatically sets the network name and encryption. Thus, the user does not need to go into the web interface and deal with complex settings. And you can easily add any device (for example, a laptop) to an already configured network: if you enter the PIN correctly, it will receive all the necessary settings. This is very convenient, which is why all major players on the market (Cisco/Linksys, Netgear, D-Link, Belkin, Buffalo, ZyXEL) now offer wireless routers with WPS support. Let's look at it in a little more detail.

There are three options for using WPS:

Push-Button-Connect (PBC). The user presses a special button on the router (hardware) and on the computer (software), thereby activating the setup process. We are not interested in this.
Entering a PIN code in the web interface. The user accesses the administrative interface of the router through a browser and enters the eight-digit PIN code written on the device body (Figure 1), after which the setup process occurs. This method is more suitable for the initial configuration of the router, so we will not consider it either.
Entering the PIN code on the user's computer (Figure 2). When connecting to a router, you can open a special WPS session, within which you can configure the router or get existing settings if you enter the PIN code correctly. This is already attractive. No authentication is required to open such a session. Anyone can do this! It turns out that the PIN code is already potentially susceptible to a bruteforce attack. But these are just flowers.

Vulnerability

As I noted earlier, the PIN code consists of eight digits - therefore, there are 10^8 (100,000,000) options to match. However, the number of options can be significantly reduced. The fact is that the last digit of the PIN code represents a certain checksum, which is calculated based on the first seven digits. As a result, we already get 10^7 (10,000,000) options. But that's not all! Next, we carefully look at the device of the WPS authentication protocol (Figure 3). It feels like it was specially designed to leave room for brute force. It turns out that PIN code verification is carried out in two stages. It is divided into two equal parts, and each part is checked separately! Let's look at the diagram:

If, after sending the M4 message, the attacker received an EAP-NACK in response, then he can be sure that the first part of the PIN code is incorrect.
If he received an EAP-NACK after sending M6, then, accordingly, the second part of the PIN code is incorrect. We get 10^4 (10,000) options for the first half and 10^3 (1,000) for the second. As a result, we have only 11,000 options for a complete search. To better understand how this will work, look at the diagram.
An important point is the possible search speed. It is limited by the speed at which the router processes WPS requests: some access points will produce results every second, others every ten seconds. Most of the time is spent on calculations public key according to the Diffie-Hellman algorithm, it must be generated before step M3. The time spent on this can be reduced by choosing a simple secret key on the client side, which will simplify the calculations of other keys in the future. Practice shows that for a successful result it is usually enough to go through only half of all options, and on average brute force takes only four to ten hours.

First implementation

The first implementation of brute force to appear was the wpscrack utility (goo.gl/9wABj), written by researcher Stefan Vibök on Python language. The utility used the Scapy library, which allows you to inject arbitrary network packets. The script can only be run under a Linux system, after first translating wireless interface into monitoring mode. You must specify a name as parameters network interface in the system, the MAC address of the wireless adapter, as well as the MAC address of the access point and its name (SSID).

$ ./wpscrack.py --iface mon0 --client 94:0c:6d:88:00:00 --bssid f4:ec:38:cf:00:00 --ssid testap -v sniffer started trying 00000000 attempt took 0.95 seconds trying 00010009<...>trying 18660005 attempt took 1.08 seconds trying 18670004# found 1st half of PIN attempt took 1.09 seconds trying 18670011 attempt took 1.08 seconds<...>trying 18674095# found 2st half of PIN<...>Network Key: 0000 72 65 61 6C 6C 79 5F 72 65 61 6C 6C 79 5F 6C 6F really_really_lo 0010 6E 67 5F 77 70 61 5F 70 61 73 73 70 68 72 61 73 ng_wpa_passph ras 0020 65 5F 67 6F 6F 64 6F 6C 75 63 6B 5F 63 72 61 63 e_good_luck_crac 0030 6B 69 6E 67 5F 74 68 69 73 5F 6F 6E 65king_this_one<...>

As you can see, first the first half of the PIN code was selected, then the second, and in the end the program produced a ready-to-use key for connecting to the wireless network. It is difficult to imagine how long it would have taken to find a key of this length (61 characters) with pre-existing tools. However, wpscrack is not the only utility for exploiting the vulnerability, and this is a rather funny moment: at the same time, another researcher, Craig Heffner from Tactical Network Solutions, was working on the same problem. Seeing that a working PoC for implementing an attack appeared on the Internet, he published his Reaver utility. It not only automates the WPS-PIN guessing process and extracts the PSK key, but also offers a greater number of settings so that the attack can be carried out against a wide variety of routers. In addition, it supports a much larger number of wireless adapters. We decided to take it as a basis and describe in detail how an attacker can use a vulnerability in the WPS protocol to connect to a secure wireless network.

HOW-TO

As with any other attack on a wireless network, we will need Linux. Here it must be said that Reaver is present in the repository of the well-known BackTrack distribution, which also already includes necessary drivers For wireless devices. Therefore, we will use it exactly.

Step 0. Prepare the system

On the official website BackTrack 5 R1 is available for download as virtual machine under VMware and boot image ISO. I recommend the last option. You can simply write the image onto a blank, or you can use the program to make bootable USB flash drive: one way or another, having booted from such a medium, we will immediately have a system ready for work without any unnecessary problems.

Crash Course on Wi-Fi Hacking

WEP ( Wired Equivalent Privacy) The very first technology for protecting a wireless network turned out to be extremely weak. You can hack it literally in a few minutes, using the weaknesses of the RC4 cipher used in it. The main tools here are the airodump-ng sniffer for collecting packets and the aircrack-ng utility, used directly to crack the key. There is also a special tool wesside-ng, which generally hacks all nearby WEP points automatically.
WPA/WPA2 (Wireless Protected Access)

Brute force is the only way to find a key for a closed WPA/WPA2 network (and even then only if there is a dump of the so-called WPA Handshake, which is broadcast when a client connects to an access point).

Brute force can drag on for days, months and years. To increase the efficiency of search, specialized dictionaries were first used, then rainbow tables were generated, and later utilities appeared that used NVIDIA technologies CUDA and ATI Stream for hardware acceleration process using the GPU. The tools used are aircrack-ng (brute force using a dictionary), cowpatty (using rainbow tables), pyrit (using a video card).

Step 1: Login

The default login and password is root:toor. Once in the console, you can safely start “X” (there are separate BackTrack assemblies - both with GNOME and KDE):

#startx

Step 2: Install Reaver

To download Reaver, we will need internet. Therefore, we connect the patchcord or configure wireless adapter(menu “Applications > Internet > Wicd Network Manager”). Next, we launch the terminal emulator, where we load latest version utilities via the repository:

# apt-get update # apt-get install reaver

Here I must say that the repository contains version 1.3, which personally did not work correctly for me. After searching for information about the problem, I found a post by the author, who recommends updating to the highest possible version by compiling sources taken from SVN. This is, in general, the most universal method installations (for any distribution).

$ svn checkout http://reaver-wps.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ reaver-wps $ cd ./reaver-wps/src/ $ ./configure $ make # make install

There will be no problems with assembly under BackTrack - I checked it personally. In the Arch Linux distribution that I use, installation is even simpler, thanks to the presence of the corresponding PKGBUILD:

$ yaourt -S reaver-wps-svn

Step 3. Preparing for brute force

To use Reaver you need to do the following:

switch the wireless adapter to monitoring mode;
find out the name of the wireless interface;
find out the MAC address of the access point (BSSID);
make sure that WPS is activated on the point.

First, let's check that the wireless interface is present in the system at all:

#iwconfig

If the output of this command contains an interface with a description (usually wlan0), it means that the system recognized the adapter (if it connected to the wireless network to load Reaver, then it is better to disconnect the connection). Let's put the adapter into monitoring mode:

# airmon-ng start wlan0

This command creates a virtual interface in monitoring mode, its name will be indicated in the command output (usually mon0). Now we need to find the access point to attack and find out its BSSID. Let's use the utility for listening to wireless broadcasts airodump-ng:

#airodump-ngmon0

A list of access points within range will appear on the screen. We are interested in points with WPA/WPA2 encryption and PSK key authentication.

It is better to choose one of the first in the list, since it is desirable to carry out an attack good connection with a dot. If there are a lot of points and the list does not fit on the screen, then you can use another well-known utility - kismet, where the interface is more suitable in this regard. Optionally, you can check on site whether the WPS mechanism is enabled at our point. To do this, Reaver comes bundled with (but only if you take it from SVN) the wash utility:

# ./wash -i mon0

The parameter is the name of the interface switched to monitoring mode. You can also use the ‘-f’ option and feed the utility a cap file created, for example, by the same airodump-ng. For some unknown reason, the Reaver package in BackTrack did not include the wash utility. Let's hope this error will be corrected by the time this article is published.

Step 4. Run brute force

Now you can proceed directly to searching your PIN. In the simplest case, you don't need much to start Reaver. You just need to specify the name of the interface (which we previously switched to monitoring mode) and the BSSID of the access point:

# reaver -i mon0 -b 00:21:29:74:67:50 -vv

The "-vv" switch enables enhanced program output so we can make sure everything works as expected.

Reaver v1.4 WiFi Protected Setup Attack Tool Copyright (c) 2011, Tactical Network Solutions, Craig Heffner [+] Waiting for beacon from 00:21:29:74:67:50 [+] Associated with 00:21:29:74:67:50 (ESSID: linksys) [+] Trying pin 63979978

If the program consistently sends PINs to the access point, it means that everything has started well, and all that remains is to wait stupidly. The process may take a long time. The most short time It took me about five hours to brute force my PIN. As soon as it is selected, the program will happily inform you about it:

[+] Trying pin 64637129 [+] Key cracked in 13654 seconds [+] WPS PIN: "64637129" [+] WPA PSK: "MyH0rseThink$YouStol3HisCarrot!" [+] AP SSID: "linksys"

The most valuable thing here is, of course, the WPA-PSK key, which you can immediately use to connect. Everything is so simple that it doesn’t even fit in your head.

Is it possible to defend yourself?

For now, there is only one way to protect yourself from an attack - disable WPS in the router settings. However, as it turned out, this is not always possible. Since the vulnerability exists not at the implementation level, but at the protocol level, you should not expect a quick patch from manufacturers that would solve all the problems. The most they can do now is to resist brute force as much as possible. For example, if you block WPS for one hour after five unsuccessful attempts to enter the PIN code, then the search will take about 90 days. But another question is, how quickly can such a patch be rolled out to millions of devices operating all over the world?

Upgrading Reaver

In the HOWTO we showed the simplest and most versatile way to use the Reaver utility. However, WPS implementation varies from manufacturer to manufacturer, so in some cases it is necessary additional customization. Below I will give additional options, which can increase the speed and efficiency of key search.

You can set the channel number and SSID of the access point: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 -c 11 -e linksys
The ‘—dh-small’ option, which sets a small value, has a beneficial effect on brute force speed secret key, thereby facilitating calculations on the access point side: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 -vv --dh-small
The default response timeout is five seconds. If necessary, you can change it: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 -t 2
The default delay between attempts is one second. It can also be configured: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 -d 0
Some access points may block WPS on certain time, suspecting that they were trying to fuck them. Reaver notices this situation and pauses the search for 315 seconds by default, the duration of this pause can be changed: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 --lock-delay=250
Some implementations of the WPS protocol will terminate the connection if the PIN code is incorrect, although according to the specification they should return a special message. Reaver automatically recognizes this situation, for this there is a ‘—nack’ option: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 --nack
The '--eap-terminate' option is intended to work with those APs that require termination of the WPS session using the EAP FAIL message: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 --eap-terminate
The occurrence of errors in the WPS session may mean that the AP is limiting the number of attempts to enter a PIN code, or is simply overloaded with requests. Information about this will be displayed on the screen. In this case, Reaver pauses its activity, and the pause time can be set using the '--fail-wait' option: # reaver -i mon0 -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 --fail-wait=360

FAQ

Question: What wireless adapter is needed for hacking?

Answer: Before experimenting, you need to make sure that the wireless adapter can operate in monitoring mode. The best way- check the list of supported equipment on the Aircrack-ng project website. If the question arises about what wireless module buy, then you can start with any adapter based on the RTL8187L chipset. USB dongles can easily be found on the Internet for $20.

Question: Why do I get "timeout" and "out of order" errors?

Answer: This usually happens due to low signal strength and bad connection with an access point. In addition, the access point may temporarily block the use of WPS.

Question: Why doesn't MAC address spoofing work for me?

Answer: You may spoof the MAC virtual interface mon0, and this will not work. You must specify the name of the real interface, for example, wlan0.

Question: Why bad signal Does Reaver work poorly, although the same WEP hacking works fine?

Answer: WEP cracking typically occurs by retransmitting captured packets to obtain more initialization vectors (IVs) needed for a successful crack. In this case, it does not matter whether any packet was lost or somehow damaged along the way. But to attack WPS, you must strictly follow the packet transfer protocol between the access point and Reaver to check each PIN code. And if at the same time some packet is lost or arrives in an indecent form, then you will have to re-establish the WPS session. This makes attacks on WPS much more dependent on signal strength. It is also important to remember that just because your wireless adapter sees an access point, this does not mean that the access point sees you. So if you are happy owner a high-power adapter from ALFA Network and an antenna of a couple of tens of dBi, then you don’t expect to be able to break all the caught access points.

Question: Reaver always sends the same PIN to the access point, what's the matter?

Answer: Check if WPS is activated on the router. This can be done using the wash utility: run it and check that your target is in the list.

Question: Why can't I associate with an access point?

Answer: This may be due to bad level signal or because your adapter is unsuitable for such research.

Question: Why do I keep getting “rate limiting detected” errors? Answer: This is because the access point has blocked WPS. Usually this is a temporary block (about five minutes), but in some cases they can impose a permanent ban (unblocking only through the administrative panel). There is one unpleasant bug in Reaver version 1.3, due to which the removal of such locks is not detected. As a workaround, they suggest using the ‘—ignore-locks’ option or downloading the latest version from SVN.

Question: Can I run two or more instances of Reaver simultaneously to speed up my attack?

Answer: Theoretically, it is possible, but if they attack the same access point, the search speed is unlikely to increase, since in this case it is limited by the weak hardware of the access point, which is already fully loaded even with one attacker.

The network security key is a password that you can use to connect to a working Wi-Fi network. The secure operation of a wireless network directly depends on it. Its main task is to protect the Wi-Fi user (owner) from unauthorized connection to it. Some may think that such a connection, in general, will not interfere much with working on the Internet. In fact, it is fraught with a significant decrease in Internet speed. Therefore, the closest attention must be paid to creating a password.

In addition to the actual complexity created password, the security of a Wi-Fi wireless network is greatly influenced by the type of data encryption. The importance of the type of encryption is explained by the fact that all data transmitted within specific network encrypted. Such a system allows you to protect yourself from unauthorized connections, because without knowing the password, a third-party user using his device simply will not be able to decrypt the data transmitted within the wireless network.

Types of network encryption

"Network security key mismatch" error on laptop. What to do?

Almost always, this error appears due to an incorrectly specified password. A computer is a machine, and if it says that the password is incorrect, then it is so.

First of all, we check the password and enter it again.
Uncheck "Hide characters" (if installed), to see the password you specify.
Also, you need to check whether it is turned on Caps Lock. After all, the letter "a" and "A" are different symbols in the password.
Check the keyboard layout, the password must be entered in English letters.

If you have forgotten your password, you can look it up in the router settings, or on another computer that previously connected to this network. How to remember the password, I wrote in the article:.

If you couldn’t fix the “Network security key mismatch” error, then change the password on your Wi-Fi router according to these instructions: . With the new password everything should connect.

Error: "Invalid key or passphrase"

After entering the password and clicking the Ok button, a message may also appear in the pop-up window: "Invalid key or passphrase".

This error appears if you specify key of less than 8 characters (and you have WPA2 encryption method set). In such a situation, you need in the settings of your router set the correct password for the Wi-Fi network. I wrote in the instructions how to do this on different routers:

Changing adapter settings.

click on the Internet icon in the lower right corner (tray);
select an access point;
enter and confirm the password.

Before entering the Rostelecom network key into the equipment settings or simply finding it out, you need to determine the IP address of the router. This will allow you to access the device settings and specify the security combination for the access point.

How to find out the network security key?

It is not without reason that Microsoft employees pay great attention to network security. The measures they take allow owners of installed Windows not to worry about attackers using their data. The users themselves can only save the passwords that are automatically created during setup and not transfer them to strangers. At the same time, it is possible to find out the network security key if it is lost.

Home group

A homegroup password is required to protect your network from unauthorized connections from other computers. It is automatically generated and provided to the user after the homegroup itself is created. The algorithm for recovering lost code looks like this:

press the “Start” button;
click on the “Control Panel” link;
in the window that opens, select “Network and Internet”;
Click on “Network and Sharing Center”;

The code displayed should be written down and used to join another computer to this homegroup.

If in the area system notifications desktop (lower right corner) is configured to display the connections icon, it will be even easier to find the network security key. To do this:

right-click on the connections icon (depending on installed theme may look different);
select “Network and Sharing Center”;
here click on the link " Home group"(lower left corner);
In the new window, select “Show or print homegroup password.”

The network security key is a password that you can use to connect to a working Wi-Fi network. The secure operation of a wireless network directly depends on it. Its main task...

Wireless network is very fast and convenient way connecting to the Internet, creating network groups, data transfer and many other useful functions that every owner of a PC or mobile gadget uses every day.

The main type of wireless networks:

1) The first type of Wi-Fi is with “open” access (the most popular and loved by everyone)

2) The second, respectively, with “closed”

(more reliable, and usually with better speed due to the small number of connected devices). But it requires a Wi-Fi network security key, which you can get from the network administrator.

On a PC, Wi-Fi without a password is depicted as antennas.

On mobile devices an open network does not have additional icons, unlike a closed network, where there is an image of a castle nearby.

With a passwordless network it’s clear: you chose it, connected and everything works, it happens that you need to go through authorization using your phone number, but this is a little off topic. What to do with closed access points, where can I find out the password? First you need to understand what a network security key is, how it works and why it is needed.

A key or password is a certain unique set of characters, set by the user at his own discretion, used to access the network, as well as encrypt data that is transmitted within it. The main purpose of the key is to increase network security.

Data is encrypted using the following technologies:

o By installing this type encryption, the user will need to enter a security code, the router will check the entered data and provide access to the network, or indicate an incorrect password.

o This type network protection is outdated, but is still in use, due to the certain kind of devices that support it. The technology is less secure and can be easily hacked; its use is not recommended.

Setting a password on the router.

Using the example TP-Link router WR841N / WR841ND we’ll look at how to find out the wireless network security key, how to look at it, how to change or delete it completely.

To get into the router settings menu, insert network wire to the router port and network card PC, then enter the following value in the address bar:

Enter admin in the login and password fields, then click login.

Your password will be indicated in the highlighted field, which can always be changed by entering data that meets the conditions specified below. Any change in the settings on the router is confirmed by clicking the “Save” button. The key can be changed by a user who has access to the router settings menu.

The method described above shows how to change the password, encryption type, or simply view the data. If there is a need to find a security key on your computer, this is possible from the “Properties” menu of the available connection.

To see the key, check the “Display entered characters” checkbox.

The password value cannot be changed in this window. It serves only to display the entered code during the first “connection”.

When connected to new network, the following window will open:

In case of a complex combination of characters, you can copy the password and paste it into the key field (if it is available in text format), for confidentiality, by checking the “Hide characters” checkbox, the password will be displayed as asterisks, then click OK. If the code turns out to be incorrect, try again, but enter the password manually, carefully observing the sequence of symbols and signs.

In order to understand how you can find out the network security key on mobile phone, you must have advanced rights to configure the gadget or use specialized programs by downloading them from the Internet.

If you are the administrator of your network, or simply have a router installed at home for a wireless connection, then try to limit strangers from the possibility of getting hooked on your network, come up with complex password combinations. How can you find the password for a new router you just bought? Just connect it to your computer via a network cable and go to the “Settings” menu, as shown above in the “Settings Menu” picture.

Video on the topic

Happy Internet to you!