This is a nice little trick I learnt whilst automating domain user creation with PowerShell, I found generating passwords in PowerShell was always ugly. Just see the example below from a previous post I’d made:

[string]$initialpassword = ([char[]](Get-Random -input $(47..57 + 65..90 +97..122) -count 8)) + (Get-Random -minimum 0 -maximum 10)

$passwordwithspacesremoved = $initialpassword.Replace(' ','')

$convertedpassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText $passwordwithspacesremoved -Force

This would generate a password like “cDUtxlvM5” which is just about as ugly as the code used to create it.

So I decided to use DinoPass instead since it created better looking passwords without the faff of generating them in PowerShell. This is a the code I used:

Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://www.dinopass.com/password/strong | Select-Object -ExpandProperty content

Which would give me a much nicer, but still secure, password like “poorJump62”. Then to use it when automating domain user creation, I would use the below and put the whole thing into a variable that I would set the password to:

$super_secure_password = Invoke-WebRequest -Uri https://www.dinopass.com/password/strong | Select-Object -ExpandProperty content | ConvertTo-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force

Enjoy!