These days when you subscribe for an internet connection from your local ISP, they usually give a WiFi router along with it. Either they send the starter kid through a local courier along with the instructions and you have to unbox the package to install it, or they send their technicians who will install it for you. In both cases, they just do the default installation with a simple WiFi access password. Many of the people do not change this password and this puts their wireless networks at risk because easy to guess passwords can be quickly cracked using many easily available tools.
If you want to audit, analyze and manage your WiFi networks, then you can use the free CobraTek WiFi Manager. This software has an added benefit that it scans your passwords and tells you if they are very weak. This way it encourages you to use stronger passwords that cannot be easily guessed or brute forced. It can also create an ad-hoc WiFi network (AP) for sharing your internet connection with other devices.
CobraTek WiFi Manager uses your computer’s WiFi network interface device to scan all the WiFi networks available in your nearby area. It shows you their names (SSID), encryption used, signal strength, authentication algorithm used and more. If the WiFi networks are connectable, then you can attempt an connection by supplying the password.
For any of the networks detected, you can attempt scanning for the password using an in-built database of over 130,000 commonly used passwords. This is basically brute forcing, so you should not use this function on other people’s WiFi networks. You should use this password only on the networks that you have administrator level access to. In the settings for the application, you can specify your own password database.
Conclusion: CobraTek WiFi Manager bundles so many features in one application – management, auditing, scanning and creation of ad-hoc WiFi networks. But the password scanning and brute forcing could become a problem if you try this feature on other people’s networks.
You can download CobraTek WiFi Manager from https://cobratek.net/