input string was not in a correct format

Question

Hi

i have a service account by name ******@mydomain.com and i have saved the password in a text file in the path(c:\windows\temp\pwd.txt)

i want to execute the below 3 lines in PowerShell. When i execute second line i am getting the below error.

ConvertTo-SecureString : Input string was not in a correct format.

$un = "******@mydomain.com"
$pw = Get-Content 'c:\windows\temp\pwd.txt' | ConvertTo-SecureString
$credentials = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $un, $pw

Answer 1

Hi Rising Flight,
It seems like you're encountering an issue with converting the content of 'c:\windows\temp\pwd.txt' to a secure string. The ConvertTo-SecureString cmdlet expects the input to be a secure string, and if the content of your text file is not in the correct format, it will throw an error.

Make sure that the content of 'c:\windows\temp\pwd.txt' is a secure string. If you have saved the password using ConvertTo-SecureString previously, you should use ConvertTo-SecureString when reading the password from the file.

Here's an example:

$un = "******@mydomain.com"

$pw = Get-Content 'c:\windows\temp\pwd.txt' | ConvertTo-SecureString

$credentials = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $un, $pw

If the content of 'c:\windows\temp\pwd.txt' is not a secure string, you should use ConvertTo-SecureString to convert the plain text password to a secure string before creating the PSCredential object.

$un = "******@mydomain.com"

$plainTextPassword = Get-Content 'c:\windows\temp\pwd.txt'

$securePassword = ConvertTo-SecureString -String $plainTextPassword -AsPlainText -Force

$credentials = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $un, $securePassword

This way, you ensure that the content of the text file is correctly converted to a secure string before creating the PSCredential object.

Regards.

Answer 2

will this work. lets say password for service account is abc

Read-Host "EnterPassword" -AsSecureString | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File "c:\windows\temp\pwdfile.txt" 
EnterPassword: abc  

$un = "******@mydomain.com"  
$pw = Get-Content 'c:\windows\temp\pwdfile.txt' | ConvertTo-SecureString  
$credentials = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $un, $pw 

Answer 3

Assuming the password in the file was in plain-text format, you almost had it right the first time. You just needed to inform the ConvertTo-SecureString of that fact.

$un = "******@mydomain.com"
$pw = Get-Content c:\junk\pw.txt | ConvertTo-Securestring -AsPlainText -force
$credentials = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $un, $pw

Answer 4

I am confused here, if i use the below powershell syntax password is not encrypted

$un = "******@mydomain.com"
$pw = Get-Content c:\windows\temp\pw.txt | ConvertTo-Securestring -AsPlainText -force
$credentials = new-object -typename System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -argumentlist $un, $pw

the below works fine but i am not sure if line number 3 needs to be edited

1.Read-Host "EnterPassword" -AsSecureString | ConvertFrom-SecureString | Out-File "c:\windows\temp\pw.txt"  
EnterPassword: abc    

2.$un = "******@mydomain.com"   
3.$pw = Get-Content 'c:\windows\temp\pw.txt' | ConvertTo-SecureString   
4.$credentials = New-Object -TypeName System.Management.Automation.PSCredential -ArgumentList $un, $pw