It is not easy to think a secure password, so that it meet certain requirements to the length and complexity. There are many programs and online services in the Internet to generate passwords, but why using third-party programs if you can do with the tools that already exist in your system. For example, you can generate random passwords using PowerShell.
To generate a password, you can try GeneratePassword method used by system to reset a user password and create a new temporary password. The length of the generated password is between 1 to 128 symbols, it may include letters, numbers and special symbols (!,@,$,%,&, etc.).
To generate a password, firstly add the System.Web assembly using Add-Type cmdlet:
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Web
Then generate your password with the command:
[System.Web.Security.Membership]::GeneratePassword(10,4)
Numbers in brackets mean that the total password length is 10 symbols with 4 non-alphabetic characters.
In our example, PowerShell generates the following complex password: hCqL=e?}W.
If you have to create new passwords often, you can use the following script:
$PasswordLength = Read-Host 'Password length (1 - 128)'
$NonAlphCh = Read-Host 'The number of Non-alphabetic characters'
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Web
[System.Web.Security.Membership]::GeneratePassword($PasswordLength,$NonAlphCh)
After specifying the necessary parameters, run it to get a password.
Here is how you can generate a random password of any level of complexity using PowerShell with no need to use any third-party software.
1 comment
Didn’t know of this simple method, thanks for sharing. I turned your script into an easy foolproof function 😉
function Get-Password
{
[CmdletBinding()]
param
(
[Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
[int]
$Length = (Read-Host ‘Password length (1 – 128)’),
[Parameter(Mandatory=$false)]
[int]
$NonAlphabeticChars = (Read-Host ‘The number of Non-alphabetic characters’)
)
try
{
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Web
[System.Web.Security.Membership]::GeneratePassword($Length,$NonAlphabeticChars)
}
catch [System.ArgumentException]
{
# retrieve information about runtime error
$info = [PSCustomObject]@{
Exception = $_.Exception.Message
Reason = $_.CategoryInfo.Reason
Target = $_.CategoryInfo.TargetName
Script = $_.InvocationInfo.ScriptName
Line = $_.InvocationInfo.ScriptLineNumber
Column = $_.InvocationInfo.OffsetInLine
}
# output information. Post-process collected info, and log info (optional)
$info
}
}