Patent ID: 8925049

Claim:
A method for assessing network vulnerabilities for a secure target wireless network, comprising: attempting to access the secure target wireless network via one or more wireless access points that provide access to the secure target wireless network with a hand-held wireless device; recovering a plurality of individual commonly-used authentication passwords from a list of commonly-used authentication passwords stored in the hand-held wireless device; automatically applying, with the hand-held wireless device programmed to employ common authentication protocols, each of the plurality of individual commonly-used authentication passwords to attempt to connect to the secure target wireless network via the one or more wireless access points; automatically scanning the secure target wireless network with the hand-held wireless device to collect data on the secure target wireless network; collecting information, with the hand-held wireless device, regarding relative signal strengths of signals from the one or more wireless access points; storing the collected data and the collected information regarding the relative signal strengths in the hand-held wireless device; analyzing the stored data and the stored information to produce an assessment of a vulnerability of the secure target wireless network to intrusion; and outputting the results of the analysis in a usable format for a user, the hand-held wireless device being programmed to autonomously undertake all of the attempting to access, recovering, automatically applying, automatically scanning, collecting, storing, analyzing and outputting.