The company I work for has an old wifi-scanner application written in VBScript that utilizes a lot of deprecated features that will cause it to stop functioning when we roll out Windows 11 Professional. For this reason, I am rewriting the application in Python. The intention is that once it is functional, I would convert it to an executable using the PyInstaller module.

What I am trying to do is to pull BSSID, SSID, Signal Strength, Authentication Type, Encryption Type, & Location (by user input) and output it into a CSV file. It would be nice to also have Radio Type and Channel, but the pywifi module does not support that. That is not the nature of my problem, however.

My problem lies in the fact that I am unable to pull Authentication Type from pywifi. This was detailed here that shows that the akm module (which documentation says is Authentication Type) actually maps to Encryption Type. It also shows that in order to get Authentication Type, it has to be mapped to windows default get_auth_alg(networks[i].dot11DefaultAuthAlgorithm) function. However, whenever I try to do that through the _wifiutil_win.py, WifiUtil class, I am getting “<function WifiUtil._get.auth_alg at ” as the output. See my code below:

 Import Third-Party Modules Necessary
import comtypes
import csv
import io
import os
import pymsgbox
import pywifi
from pywifi import _wifiutil_win
import re
import time

# Prompts for location from user
choice = pymsgbox.prompt('Please enter the location that is being scanned: n N: Northern Atrium n NE: Northeastern Atrium n E: Eastern Atrium n SE: Southeastern Atrium n S: Southern Atrium n SW: Southwestern Atrium'
               'n W: Western Atrium n NW: Northwestern Atrium n K: Kitchen n I: IT Area n V: Vacations Area n T: Travelstore Area n D: Denise Office n M: Meetings Area n R: Reception', 'Balboa Travel WiFi Scan')

# Populates location field based on user input
match choice:
    case 'N':
        location = "Northern Atrium"
    case 'NE':
        location = "Northeastern Atrium"
    case 'E':
        location = "Eastern Atrium"
    case 'SE':
        location = "Southeastern Atrium"
    case 'S':
        location = "Southern Atrium"
    case 'SW':
        location = "Southwestern Atrium"
    case 'W':
        location = "Western Atrium"
    case 'NW':
        location = "Northwestern Atrium"
    case 'K':
        location = "Kitchen"
    case 'I':
        location = "IT Area"
    case 'V':
        location = "Vacations"
    case 'T':
        location = "Travelstore Area"
    case 'D':
        location = "Denise's Office"
    case 'M':
        location = "Meetings Area"
    case 'R':
        location = "Reception"
                
# Execute Wi-Fi Scan
wifi = pywifi.PyWiFi()
iface = wifi.interfaces()[0]
iface.scan()

timer = 30
while timer > 0:
    pymsgbox.alert('Time Remaining: ' + str(timer) + ' seconds', 'Scan in Progress', timeout=1000)
    timer -= 1

results = iface.scan_results()

# Creates the csv file and populates field names in the first row
FilePath = 'C:/Dell/Wifi-Scan.csv'

file_exists = os.path.isfile(FilePath)
       
with io.open(FilePath, 'a', encoding='utf-8', newline='') as file:
    fieldnames = ['BSSID', 'SSID', 'Signal', 'Authentication Type', 'Encryption', 'Location']
    writer = csv.writer(file)

    # If File already exists, do not write headers.
    if not file_exists:
        writer.writerow(fieldnames)

    #Creates the link between fieldnames and variables
    for network in results:
        bssid = network.bssid[:-1]

        ssid = network.ssid
        if len(ssid) == 0:
            ssid = "No SSID"  # Converts blank value to No SSID

        auth = _wifiutil_win.WifiUtil._get_auth_alg
        cipher = network.akm

        # Converts RSSI to Signal Strength
        strength = int(((network.signal - (-90)) * (100 - 0) / ((-21) - (-90))))

        # Case for matching Authentication Type
        match auth:
            case [0]:
                auth = 'None'
            case [1]:
                auth = 'Open'
            case [2]:
                auth = 'Shared Key'
            case [3]:
                auth = 'WPA'
            case [4]:
                auth = 'WPA-PSK'
            case [5]:
                auth = 'WPA None'
            case [6]:
                auth = 'WPA2'
            case [7]:
                auth = 'WPA2-PSK'
            case [8]:
                auth = 'WPA3'
            case [9]:
                auth = 'WPA3 Enterprise'
            case [10]:
                auth = 'WPA3 SAE'
            case [11]:
                auth = 'WPA3 Enterprise'

        #Case for matching Cipher Type
        match cipher:
            case [0]:
                cipher = 'None'
            case [1]:
                cipher = 'WEP'
            case [2]:
                cipher = 'TKIP'
            case [4]:
                cipher = 'CCMP'
            case [5]:
                cipher = 'WEP'
            case [100]:
                cipher = 'WPA'
            case [101]:
                cipher = 'WEP'

        # Writes the scan results into the fields
        row = [bssid, ssid, strength, auth, cipher, location]
        writer.writerow(row)

pymsgbox.alert('Scan Completed.  File saved to ' + str(FilePath), 'Scan Completed')

Documentation for Pywifi _wifiutil_win.py can be found here

I’ve also tried writing the program using the subprocess.check_output using netsh wlan show networks mode=Bssid, but I am having difficulty enumerating the specific information that I want to extract and input into a csv. Thus why I’m trying to dig into this pywifi issue to fix execution this way.

I’ve tried executing the WifiUtils class directly from pywifi’s _wifiutil_win.py capabilities which only returned “<function WifiUtil._get.auth_alg at ” as output.

I’ve tried calling the network.auth_alg directly in my code and I get an error that there is no auth_alg attribute for the network object.