Powershell: How do I connect to a network folder on a different domain with stored non-plaintext username/password

Question

I'm trying to connect to a network share via powershell. The network share is on a different domain, so I need to supply credentials. Since New-PSDrive doesn't support credentials, I was going to use net use, but I'm worried about putting my username/password right there in plaintext into the script. I forced ConvertTo-SecureString to make a secure string out of my password and then used ConvertFrom-SecureString and stored the result in a file. Then, I pulled it out of the file like this and tried net use:

$password = Get-Content <locationOfStoredPasswordFile> | ConvertTo-SecureString
net use q: "\\server\share" $password /user:domain\username

But net use doesn't recognize the secure string.

Anyone have any ideas on how to store the credentials so net use can use them? Thanks!

Answer 1

Here's two functions I use for encrypting/decrypting strings. They were adapted from a powershell.com post, but I don't have the link handy. The idea is that your password file would store the output of Protect-String and then to convert back to a regular string, read in file and call UnProtect-String, that value returned from UnProtect string would be your $password variable.

#######################
function Protect-String 
{
    param([string]$InputString)
    $secure = ConvertTo-SecureString $InputString -asPlainText -force
    $export = $secure | ConvertFrom-SecureString
    write-output $export

} #Protect-String

#######################
function UnProtect-String 
{
    param([string]$InputString)

    $secure = ConvertTo-SecureString $InputString
    $helper = New-Object system.Management.Automation.PSCredential("SQLPSX", $secure)
    $plain = $helper.GetNetworkCredential().Password
    write-output $plain

} #UnProtect-String