Real-World Scripting: Changing Passwords on Multiple Computers

Changing local Administrator account passwords on numerous servers and desktop PCs can be time-consuming. You can change passwords on a few servers manually, but if you're dealing with a lot of machines and long, complex passwords, changing passwords manually is burdensome. Furthermore, the possibility of someone incorrectly entering a password or putting a password on the wrong node is an ever-present risk. For security reasons, the somewhat-common practice of using the same password on several servers isn't ideal. To avoid these problems, you can buy third-party utilities to handle the task, or you can write a simple script that can do the job for free. For example, I wrote the script BulkChangePw.pl, which Listing 1, page 4, shows.

Using a Script to Create Passwords
Creating a lot of unique passwords can be challenging; people tend to think in terms of words or phrases, which often results in passwords that intruders can easily crack. (For some best practices to help you protect your Administrator accounts, see the Web sidebar "Best Practices for Secure Administrator Accounts," http://www.winscriptingsolutions.com, InstantDoc ID 25721.) The Roth Consulting Web site contains some excellent scripts. I used George Shaffer's Password.pl script (http://www.roth.net/perl/scripts/scripts.asp?password.pl) to generate strong, unique passwords. Password.pl includes configuration options that let you specify the number and length of passwords you need to generate. Because BulkChangePw.pl uses a Comma Separated Value (CSV) input file, be sure that you configure Password.pl to remove the comma (,) from the list of characters the script can use to create passwords. To fine-tune Password.pl's output to meet your requirements, install Perl, then download the script and run it from the command prompt. I used the command shell's quick-edit feature to copy a list of passwords into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. . . .