Automatically sign powershell script using Get-PfxCertificate

Question

I have to sign remote scripts with a certificate from the remote machine from which I have a .pfx file.

I would like to automate the scripting by supplying the password to the Get-PfxCertificate programmatically.

So the question is:

Is it possible to somehow supply programmatically the required password to

Get-PfxCertificate?

Answer 1

$CertPath = "my.pfx"
$CertPass = "mypw"
$Cert = New-Object System.Security.Cryptography.X509Certificates.X509Certificate2($CertPath, $CertPass)
Set-AuthenticodeSignature -Certificate $Cert -TimeStampServer http://timestamp.verisign.com/scripts/timstamp.dll -FilePath $OutputFilename

Make sure you have the proper permissions otherwise you won't be able to create an instance of the X509Certificate2 object.

Answer 2

I did a bit of checking around on this and couldn't find a clean way to provide the password programmatically. I suspect it is meant to be this way for security reasons. Either that or the PowerShell development team just blew it by not including a Credential parameter for this cmdlet. The only other option I can think of is to use someting like SendKeys to send the individual password character key presses to the PowerShell console at the right time via a background job (blech - just threw up in my mouth a little). :-)