Category Archives: Powershell

Automation, Azure, AzureAD, Powershell

Scheduled migration / group add script

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Usually, I want to roll out new features gradually to my users.

I used to do this by creating a security group, assigning new policies/software/patches etc to it, and then telling the IT staff to add users to it in groups and check with them if things went well.

But why? Why is that manual step needed?

Exactly, it is not!

So attached script can be scheduled in an Azure Automation Account (with Managed Identity enabled!) to add an X amount of users from Group A to Group B. This script can be scheduled to e.g. run daily until all users have been moved. Multiple scheduled would also work in case you’re deploying multiple features.

Handling exceptions

When certain users need to be excluded, simply create an exclusion security group and exclude that from your policies. Exclusions take precedence in most systems.

Grouping users

You can group deployment by supplying the groupByProperty, e.g. by Country

The code

https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/-/blob/master/add-batchToGroup.ps1

Required modules

  • Az.Accounts

Graph Permissions

You’ll have to give the Managed Identity of your automation account sufficient graph permissions. This cannot be done through the GUI, so I’ve added a snippet you can use here:

https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/-/blob/master/add-roleToManagedIdentity.ps1

Additionals

You’ll probably want to communicate to your users in advance, it’d be fairly easy to generate a report in advance or to add email notifications to the script but that will require additional graph permissions.

Azure Virtual Desktop, EMS, Intune, Powershell, Security

Lightweight LAPS solution for INtune (MEM)

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UPDATE: LeanLAPS has finally been ‘superceded’ by Microsoft’s own LAPS 🙂 https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/microsoft-entra-azure-ad-blog/introducing-windows-local-administrator-password-solution-with/ba-p/1942487

The main differences between Microsoft AAD LAPS and LeanLAPS:

  1. MS Won’t enable the account if it’s disabled.
  2. MS Won’t create the account if it doesn’t exist.
  3. MS Won’t add it to Administrators group if it’s not a member.
  4. MS Won’t remove accounts from Administrators group if they’re not supposed to be there.
  5. MS has an AAD integrated GUI and RBAC
  6. LeanLAPS requires P2 licensing because it used Proactive Remediations

LeanLAPS

Managing local admin accounts using Intune has a lot of quirks, my tele-colleague Rudy Ooms has already written extensively about this. He also wrote a PowerShell solution to rotate a specific local admin’s password and had the genius idea of using Proactive Remediations (a MEM feature) to display passwords to admins, integrated / free in the Intune Console.

However, I felt I needed a more lightweight solution that;

  • does not require/modify registry keys
  • does not store the password locally
  • can encrypt the password if desired
  • does not need separate detection and remediation scripts
  • automatically provisions a local admin account
  • can remove any other local admin accounts if desired
  • can whitelist approved admins or groups from AzureAD or Active Directory
  • is language/locale-agnostic (e.g. ‘Administrators’ vs ‘Administradores’….)

Thus LeanLAPS was born!

To install/use:

1. head into the Proactive Remediations section of MDE and click Create script package:

2. Fill out some details:

3. Download and doublecheck the config of LeanLAPS.ps1 (e.g. configure if other local admins should be removed, what the local admin name should be and the password length). Make sure to use NotePad++ / that the file stays UTF-8 Encoded without a BOM.

4. Set both the detection and remediation script to LeanLAPS.ps1 and run it in 64 bit:

5. Assign to a group and deploy. By default it will run every day, but you can also let it run more or less frequently, which determines how often the password is reset (hourly in below example):

6. Deploy, and then click on the script package:

7. Go to Device status and add both output columns:

Congratulations, you can now see the current local admin passwords for all managed Windows 10 devices!

Note: if you wish to trigger a quick remediation, delete the correct keys under Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\IntuneManagementExtension\SideCarPolicies\Scripts\Execution and Reports in the client’s registry, then restart the IntuneManagementExtension service and the remediation will re-run within 5 minutes.

8. If you want to display an encrypted password in Intune, generate a public and private key and configure the resulting values in gui.ps1 and leanLAPS.ps1

9. If you don’t want LeanLAPS to remove certain preapproved admins or groups as admin, make sure to configure the $approvedAdmins variable.

RBAC

If you provide e.g. your helpdesk with the correct Intune roles, they will be able to see local admin passwords as reported by above solution:

GUI

The community, in the form of Colton Lacy, also added an optional GUI frontend for LeanLAPS which you could use for e.g. helpdesk staff:

https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/-/blob/master/leanLAPS/gui.ps1

Troubleshooting

If your passwords don’t rotate correctly, check https://smsagent.blog/2021/04/27/a-case-of-the-unexplained-intune-password-policy-and-forced-local-account-password-changes/

Automation, EMS, Intune, Powershell

Configuring the Windows 10 Pro Lock Screen using MEM

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Windows 10 Enterprise supports a specific MEM policy to configure the Windows 10 Lock screen for End-users. If you’re unlucky enough to be on a lesser Windows 10 version, you’ll need to trick the OS into thinking the lock screen is modified by the user instead of through a policy.

Here’s a simple ARM template for blob storage and a PS script to deploy through MEM in user context to configure the lock screen of your users:

1-click ARM template

And the script itself (don’t forget to configure the image URL):

<#
    .SYNOPSIS
    Sets custom lock screen based on file in an Azure Storage Blob container
    See blob template to automatically configure a blob container: https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/-/blob/master/ARM%20templates/blob%20storage%20with%20container%20for%20Teams%20Backgrounds%20and%20public%20access.json
   
    .NOTES
    filename: set-windows10LockScreen.ps1
    author: Jos Lieben
    blog: www.lieben.nu
    created: 13/05/2021
#>

$changedDate = "2021-05-13"
$lockscreenFileURL = "https://tasdsadgsadsad.blob.core.windows.net/teamsbackgrounds/figure-a.jpg" #this is the full URL to the desired lock screen image

Start-Transcript -Path (Join-Path -Path $Env:TEMP -ChildPath "set-windows10LockScreen.log")

$tempFile = (Join-Path $Env:TEMP -ChildPath "img100.jpg")

try{
    Write-Output "downloading lock screen file from $lockscreenFileURL"
    Invoke-WebRequest -Uri $lockscreenFileURL -UseBasicParsing -Method GET -OutFile $tempFile
    Write-Output "file downloaded to $tempFile"
}catch{
    Write-Output "Failed to download file, aborting"
    Write-Error $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    Exit
}

[Windows.System.UserProfile.LockScreen,Windows.System.UserProfile,ContentType=WindowsRuntime] | Out-Null
Add-Type -AssemblyName System.Runtime.WindowsRuntime

$asTaskGeneric = ([System.WindowsRuntimeSystemExtensions].GetMethods() | ? { $_.Name -eq 'AsTask' -and $_.GetParameters().Count -eq 1 -and $_.GetParameters()[0].ParameterType.Name -eq 'IAsyncOperation`1' })[0]
Function Await($WinRtTask, $ResultType) {
    $asTask = $asTaskGeneric.MakeGenericMethod($ResultType)
    $netTask = $asTask.Invoke($null, @($WinRtTask))
    $netTask.Wait(-1) | Out-Null
    $netTask.Result
}

Function AwaitAction($WinRtAction) {
    $asTask = ([System.WindowsRuntimeSystemExtensions].GetMethods() | ? { $_.Name -eq 'AsTask' -and $_.GetParameters().Count -eq 1 -and !$_.IsGenericMethod })[0]
    $netTask = $asTask.Invoke($null, @($WinRtAction))
    $netTask.Wait(-1) | Out-Null
}

[Windows.Storage.StorageFile,Windows.Storage,ContentType=WindowsRuntime] | Out-Null
		
try{
	$image = Await ([Windows.Storage.StorageFile]::GetFileFromPathAsync($tempFile)) ([Windows.Storage.StorageFile])
    Write-Output "Image loaded from $tempFile"
}catch {
    Write-Output "Failed to load image from $tempFile"
    Write-Error $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
    Exit
} 
       
try{ 
    Write-Output "Setting image as lock screen image"
    AwaitAction ([Windows.System.UserProfile.LockScreen]::SetImageFileAsync($image))
    Write-Output "$tempFile configured as lock screen image"
    Remove-Item -Path $tempFile -Force -Confirm:$False
}catch{
    Write-Output "Failed to set lock screen image"
    Write-Error $_ -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
} 

Write-Output "Script complete"
Stop-Transcript

Source: https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/-/blob/master/set-windows10LockScreen.ps1

Deploying in user context:

Powershell, Uncategorized

Copying filesystem permissions for long paths using AlphaFS nad Powershell

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AlphaFS is my go-to library when working with Long Paths, since PowerShell’s built in functions do not support long paths and error out.

As I couldn’t find good PowerShell examples using GetAccessControl and SetAccessControl with the AlphaFS library, I wanted to post my script here for those googling an example 🙂

Param(
    [String]$sourcePath,
    [String]$targetPath
)

[System.Reflection.Assembly]::UnsafeLoadFrom('https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/-/raw/master/lib/AlphaFS.dll?inline=false')

$sourcePath = [Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.Path]::GetLongPath($sourcePath)
$targetPath = [Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.Path]::GetLongPath($targetPath)

if([Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.Directory]::Exists($sourcePath)){
    Write-Verbose "Detected sourcePath as FOLDER"
    $sourceObject = New-Object Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.DirectoryInfo($sourcePath)
}elseif([Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.File]::Exists($sourcePath)){
    Write-Verbose "Detected sourcePath as FILE"
    $sourceObject = New-Object Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.FileInfo($sourcePath)
}else{
    Throw "sourcePath not found"
}

if([Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.Directory]::Exists($targetPath)){
    Write-Verbose "Detected targetPath as FOLDER"   
    $targetObject = New-Object Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.DirectoryInfo($targetPath)
}elseif([Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.File]::Exists($targetPath)){
    Write-Verbose "Detected targetPath as FILE"
    $targetObject = New-Object Alphaleonis.Win32.Filesystem.FileInfo($targetPath)
}else{
    Throw "targetPath not found"
}

$sourceACL = $sourceObject.GetAccessControl("Access")
$targetObject.SetAccessControl($sourceACL)

Git: https://gitlab.com/Lieben/assortedFunctions/-/blob/master/copy-longPathACL.ps1