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Random Password Generator in PowerShell

Here is a quick and dirty PowerShell script that you can use to generate pseudo-random passwords using dictionary words, numbers and special characters.

This kind of script is good for environments such as schools and universities where mass-enrolment is quite common before the start of the academic year.

You can incorporate the function in your own script or come up with something new.

Credit goes to setgetgo.com for making the random word generator API available for public use.

The code is available on my GitHub page and is a good place to check for the latest iteration of code as well as some examples. Below is the code as of 14/06/2016

<#
.SYNOPSIS
Generate a random password

.DESCRIPTION
Uses the setgetgo.com random word API to generate random words. A random number and special character is then appended

.PARAMETER numberOfPasswords
Number of passwords to generate. Default is 1.

.PARAMETER wordLength
Word length. Default is 8.

.PARAMETER allowedSpecialCharacters
Special characters that are allowed to be appended to the password. Default is ! * and ?
If defining your own, use the format:
Generate-Password -allowedSpecialCharacters "!","?",",","/"

.PARAMETER maximumNumber
Default number to append to word will be between 0 and 999.

.EXAMPLE
PS C:\> Generate-Password
This will generate a random 8 character word, append a number between 0 and 999 and finally append a special character.

.NOTES
Additional information about the function.
#>
function Generate-Password
{
[CmdletBinding()]
[OutputType([string])]
param
(
[Parameter(Mandatory = $false)]
[int]$numberOfPasswords = 1,
[Parameter(Mandatory = $false)]
[int]$wordLength = 8,
[Parameter(Mandatory = $false)]
$allowedSpecialCharacters = @('!', '*', '?'),
[Parameter(Mandatory = $false)]
[int]$maximumNumber = 999
)

for ($i = 1; $i -le $numberOfPasswords; $i++)
{
$randomWord = Invoke-WebRequest -URI http://randomword.setgetgo.com/get.php?len=$wordLength
$randomNumber = Get-Random -Maximum $maximumNumber
$randomSpecialCharacter = $allowedSpecialCharacters | Get-Random
Write-Output "$($randomWord.content)$randomNumber$randomSpecialCharacter"
}
}
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Tech

Office 365 Quarantine Tool

If you find yourself using the Office 365 (Exchange Online) e-mail quarantine often then you probably know how frustrating and slow it can be to quickly find and release quarantined items. Often times you’ll find yourself waiting for a few minutes only to realise it’s not doing anything. Then you have to refresh the page and re-enter your search criteria. The fact you can’t even wildcard searches is also unforgivable (it’s 2016 Microsoft, why can we not wildcard search the subject and sender fields?!)

This annoyance coupled with my eagerness to play with PowerShell led me to develop a quick and dirty quarantine tool or viewer if you like. The tool is quite basic but it will let you do the following:

  • Wildcard search the subject and sender fields
  • Configure the number of results to return
  • Release a message based on message ID

2016-06-07 20_17_07-Office 365 Quarantine Tool v012016-06-07 20_19_19-Office 365 Quarantine Tool v01
If you want to have a play with the tool, it’s on my GitHub along with the source code if you feel like suggesting some improvements.

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Tech

Remove Extra Registry Settings from GPO

In this guide I will walk through how you can quickly and easily remove Extra Registry Settings from your group policies objects when you don’t have access to the custom .ADM to ‘unconfigure’ them or they don’t show up in the GPO editor for what ever reason.

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Tech

Creating Office 365 Mailboxes in a Hybrid Setup

In this article I will show you how to create Exchange Online mailboxes in a hybrid environment such that the maiboxes also show up on the on-premises Exchange server management console.

The most logical way of creating an Exchange Online mailbox (you’d think) is to let AD users DirSync across to 365, assign them licenses and be done with it. However doing it this way doesn’t create a link between Exchange Online and your On-Premises Exchange server which means you can’t do things like manage the user’s mailbox from EMC or migrate the mailbox between on-premises and Exchange Online.

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Tech

Bulk Licensing Office 365 Users with PowerShell

Licensing Office 365 users manually can be a tedious task; especially if you are tasked with licensing hundreds or even thousands (think educational institutes that need to license user’s every semester or academic year).

I created a fairly basic script that will take a .CSV input and license your users according to your Office 365 environment and the licenses you have available.