Check whether user account has password set

Question

In standalone (non-domain-joined) Windows, is it possible to use PowerShell to check if a given local user account has a password set / a blank password?

According to https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/How-to-check-if-a-local-870ab031 and https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/heyscriptingguy/2005/10/06/how-can-i-verify-that-none-of-my-local-user-accounts-have-a-blank-password/, this is possible with VBScript but only because ChangePassword requires you to supply the original password whereas the PowerShell commands don't seem to.

I read somewhere that you can verify a password by running a process as the user with their credentials and note the result but, apparently, you can't use an empty string as credentials.

You could set a local password policy to make sure that their passwords meet whatever policy your company wants. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/security/threat-protection/security-policy-settings/minimum-password-length — Nixphoe, Sep 12 '18 at 14:16
@Nixphoe Yes, I've done that but it doesn't seem to apply retroactively - user accounts that didn't have a password are still able to sign in without a password. So, I'm trying to write a PowerShell script which will identify these user accounts and require them to set a password on next sign-in. — mythofechelon, Sep 12 '18 at 14:18

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 14 '20 at 13:02

A lot of searching and trial & error led me to develop this:

$PrincipalContext = New-Object System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement.PrincipalContext('Machine')

Get-LocalUser | Where-Object Enabled -eq $true | ForEach-Object {
    $myUsername = $_.Name
    $myPasswordIsBlank = $PrincipalContext.ValidateCredentials($myUserName, $null)
    If ($myPasswordIsBlank) {
        # Do whatever you want here to output or alert the fact that you found a blank password.
    }
}

To run this through my RMM, I had to add the following to the start of the code to prevent an error:

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.DirectoryServices.AccountManagement

mythofechelon · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-14T09:14:50.340

I achieved this with the following PowerShell commands / script:

Write-Output "It's only possible to detect whether user accounts have blank passwords if the minimum password length is 0.";

$PasswordMinimumLength = 0;
Write-Output "Implementing new minimum password length of $PasswordMinimumLength...";

$Secedit_CFGFile_Path = [System.IO.Path]::GetTempFileName();
$Secedit_Path = "$env:SystemRoot\system32\secedit.exe";
$Secedit_Arguments_Export = "/export /cfg $Secedit_CFGFile_Path /quiet";
$Secedit_Arguments_Import = "/configure /db $env:SystemRoot\Security\local.sdb /cfg $Secedit_CFGFile_Path /areas SecurityPolicy";

Start-Process -FilePath $Secedit_Path -ArgumentList $Secedit_Arguments_Export -Wait;

$SecurityPolicy_Old = Get-Content $Secedit_CFGFile_Path;

$SecurityPolicy_New = $SecurityPolicy_Old -Replace "MinimumPasswordLength = \d+", "MinimumPasswordLength = $PasswordMinimumLength";

Set-Content -Path $Secedit_CFGFile_Path -Value $SecurityPolicy_New;

Try {
    Start-Process -FilePath $Secedit_Path -ArgumentList $Secedit_Arguments_Import -Wait;
} Catch {
    Write-Output "...FAILED.";
    Break;
}
If ($?){
    Write-Output "...Success.";
}
Write-Output "";
Write-Output "----------------------------------------------------------------";
Write-Output "";

Write-Output "Searching for user accounts with blank passwords...";

$BlankPasswordsFoundWording_PreUsername = "Found user account";
$BlankPasswordsFoundWording_PostUsername = "with a blank password.";
$NoBlankPasswordsFoundWording = "No user accounts with blank passwords found.";

$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_Commands = @"
On Error Resume Next

Dim strComputerName
Dim strPassword

strComputerName = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Network").ComputerName
strPassword = ""

Set LocalAccounts = GetObject("WinNT://" & strComputerName)
LocalAccounts.Filter = Array("user")

Dim Flag
Flag = 0 

For Each objUser In LocalAccounts
    objUser.ChangePassword strPassword, strPassword
    If Err = 0 or Err = -2147023569 Then
        Flag = 1
        Wscript.Echo "$BlankPasswordsFoundWording_PreUsername """ & objUser.Name & """ $BlankPasswordsFoundWording_PostUsername"
    End If
    Err.Clear
Next

If Flag = 0 Then
    WScript.Echo "$NoBlankPasswordsFoundWording"
End If
"@
# The above here-string terminator cannot be indented.;

# cscript won't accept / process a file with extension ".tmp" so ".vbs" needs to be appended.;
$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Path_TMP = [System.IO.Path]::GetTempFileName();
$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Directory = (Get-ChildItem $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Path_TMP).DirectoryName;
$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Name_TMP = (Get-ChildItem $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Path_TMP).Name;
$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Name_VBS = $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Name_TMP + ".vbs";
$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Path_VBS = "$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Directory\$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Name_VBS";

Set-Content -Path $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Path_VBS -Value $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_Commands;

$VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_Output = & cscript /nologo $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_File_Path_VBS;
# Write-Output $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_Output;

$UsersWithBlankPasswords = $VBS_IdentifyBlankPasswords_Output | Select-String -Pattern "$BlankPasswordsFoundWording_PreUsername";

If ($UsersWithBlankPasswords -NE $Null){
    ForEach ($UserWithBlankPassword in $UsersWithBlankPasswords){
        $Username = [regex]::match($UserWithBlankPassword, '"([^"]+)"').Groups[1].Value;

        Write-Output "...$BlankPasswordsFoundWording_PreUsername ""$Username"" $BlankPasswordsFoundWording_PostUsername";
    }
} ElseIf ($UsersWithBlankPasswords -Eq $Null){
    Write-Output "$NoBlankPasswordsFoundWording";
}

Write-Output "";
Write-Output "----------------------------------------------------------------";
Write-Output "";

Write-Output "Implementing original minimum password length...";

Set-Content -Path $Secedit_CFGFile_Path -Value $SecurityPolicy_Old;

Try {
    Start-Process -FilePath $Secedit_Path -ArgumentList $Secedit_Arguments_Import -Wait;
} Catch {
    Write-Output "...FAILED.";
    Break;
}
If ($?){
    Write-Output "...Success.";
}

Check whether user account has password set

2 Answers2