tell application “Keychain Scripting”
set x to keychain “System.keychain”
tell x
set y to every key whose name is “Enter your key name here”
password of item 1 of y
end tell
end tell

The airport key will display in the applescript results “tab” as a hex encoded string. You can use that as is when trying to access your wireless network. Just select the proper menu item (something like “40/128 bit hex”) when you connect.

Just thought that would be easier.

In XCode, under New Project, in the Command Line Utility section, choose Standard Tool.

Delete the default code, and replace with the above.

Then search and replace all the curly quotes with straight quotes.

fix the #include lines by surrounding the above indicated strings (System/…) with a less-than sign, and a greater-than sign.

As indicate also above, right click on the project icon (the blue page at the top right of the Project window), and select. Add->External Frameworks. Then select Security.framework.

Then go into the main() function, and replace the value of keyname with the real name of the keychain you want to read.

Then click build and run.

Note that if it can’t find the key you are looking for, it will crash b/c even though it tells you the status, it doesn’t check to see if the call failed before it tries to read the result.

Just so you know, I’ve had this problem with MacOS 10.3, so it has nothing to do with the update.

I just deleted the system keychain in the utility and when it recreated it after reboot, it had the same password as my login keychain.

What I want to know is how to get the passwords to store in my login keychain and NEVER in system. I’m the only user, so I don’t care if ‘other users’ have access to the wireless.

I’ve had the most horrific trouble with the mac just not finding networks, or not searching one’s I’ve created and finding them, or duplicating a key already in my login keychain. If it’s in my login keychain, it find the network and connects. If it’s not, it won’t, and it won’t let me ‘create’ an existing network. It’s a daily pain.

Make sure to include the Security Framework in XCode under External Frameworks; otherwise it won’t link.

Anyway, the following program reads a key from the System keychain. Please note that you should press “allow ONCE” when the system asks you.

// (c) 2005 Eljakim Schrijvers
// NO WARRANTY WHATSOEVER – USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

#include
#include
#include

void printSecStatusError(char *prefix,OSStatus status) {
printf(”%s: (%d)”,prefix, status);
switch(status) {
case noErr: printf(“No Error”); break;
case errSecNoSuchKeychain: printf(“No such keychain”); break;
case errSecItemNotFound: printf(“The item cannot be found”); break;
default: printf(“An error has occurred”);
}
printf(“n”);
}

int main() {
char *passwordData = nil;
char *keychain = ”/Library/Keychains/System.keychain”;
// char *keychain = “login.keychain”; // uncomment to use your login keychain
char *keyname = “Eljakim”; // what key are you looking at?
UInt32 passwordLength = nil;
SecKeychainItemRef itemRef = nil;
SecKeychainRef keychainRef = nil;
SecKeychainStatus keychainStatus = nil;
OSStatus status;
status = SecKeychainOpen(keychain,&keychainRef);
printSecStatusError(“Open”,status);
status = SecKeychainGetStatus(keychainRef, &keychainStatus);
printSecStatusError(“GetStatus”,status);
status = SecKeychainFindGenericPassword ( keychainRef,0,””,strlen(keyname),keyname,&passwordLength,&passwordData,&itemRef );
printSecStatusError(“FindGenericPassword”,status);
passwordData[passwordLength]=0;
printf(“Password: (%d) %sn”,passwordLength,passwordData);
return 0;
}