PowerShell Team
Automating the world one-liner at a time…
Latest posts
PowerShell Core 6 Release Candidate
PowerShell Core 6 Release Candidate Last year, we announced that PowerShell was not only Open Source, but also cross platform. The finish line is in sight and we recently published the Release Candidate for PowerShell Core 6! PowerShell Team ♥ Community It has been an amazing experience for the team working with the community on PowerShell Core 6! Being able to work openly and transparently meant that we could address customer concerns much more quickly than in the days of Windows PowerShell. The contributions from the community have also enabled PowerShell Core 6 to be more agile and richer in capability, par...
DSC Resource Kit Release November 2017
We just released the DSC Resource Kit! This release includes updates to 10 DSC resource modules. In these past 6 weeks, 53 pull requests have been merged and 50 issues have been closed, all thanks to our amazing community! The modules updated in this release are: For a detailed list of the resource modules and fixes in this release, see the Included in this Release section below. Our last community call for the DSC Resource Kit was last week on Novemeber 8. A recording of our updates as well as summarizing notes will be available soon. Join us for the next...
Azure Automation DSC Pricing Flexibility
Today we would like to share a new flexible pricing strategy for managing server nodes using Azure Automation to deliver PowerShell Desired State Configuration, giving you greater control over costs of managing on-premises nodes. As you might already know, Azure Automation DSC (Azure DSC) is a managed service that is free when used to manage virtual machines running in Microsoft Azure. This provides the functionality of the in-box DSC Pull server without needing to maintain a server to host the capability, plus a lot of additional features. Some of the goodies that you get with Azure DSC are as follows: Fea...
PowerShell Constrained Language Mode
PowerShell Constrained Language Mode Update (May 17, 2018) In addition to the constraints listed in this article, system wide Constrained Language mode now also disables the ScheduledJob module. The ScheduledJob feature uses Dot Net serialization that is vulnerable to deserialization attacks. So now whenever an application whitelisting solution is applied such as DeviceGuard or AppLocker, PowerShell will run in Constrained Language mode and also disable the ScheduledJob module. Use the Windows Task Scheduler or PowerShell ScheduledTasks module as an alternative. For more information see CVE-2018-0958. What i...
Defending Against PowerShell Attacks
[Updated Feb 20th, 2020 with latest guidance] The security industry is ablaze with news about how PowerShell is being used by both commodity malware and attackers alike. Surely there’s got to be a way to defend yourself against these attacks! There absolutely is. PowerShell is - by far - the most securable and security-transparent shell, scripting language, or programming language available. Our recommendations are: Some security professionals recommend disabling PowerShell as a method of risk mitigation. Microsoft’s guidance on this falls into two areas: For further...
Require License Acceptance Support in PowerShellGet
PowerShellGet version 1.5.0 has added support for module publishers to require explicit license acceptance from users before installing a module. This feature has been requested by several of our partners, in order to meet their legal requirements. If a user installs, updates, or saves a module using PowerShellGet, and the publisher of that module requires the user to agree to a license, the user must indicate they accept the license or the operation fails. This works whether the module is installed directly or if it is installed because it is a dependency for another module. Publishing Requirements for Modules...
Navigate Azure Resources Just Like a File System
At Microsoft Ignite (around 8:15 min), we announced the Public Preview of PowerShell in Azure Cloud Shell. A unique feature of PowerShell experience in Azure Cloud Shell is navigation of Azure resources via the Azure drive (Azure:). Today, we are making this feature available on PowerShell Gallery as well as making the source code available on GitHub. This enables you to navigate Azure resources from any machine running Windows PowerShell 5 or higher. Simple Hierarchy in PowerShell (SHiPS) - An Easier Way to Build PowerShell Providers AzurePSDrive is built on top of an abstraction layer - SHiPS, which sim...
Polaris – simple Microservices using only PowerShell
Polaris - Simple Microservices using only PowerShell Polaris is a cross-platform, minimalist web framework for PowerShell Core 6. With 6 lines of code, you have your very own webserver running and ready to accept requests - all within PowerShell: Disclaimer We open sourced this as an experiment. It's not an officially supported Microsoft library and there is no plan yet to do so. However, we are listening to the community to determine if this work is important enough to continue investing in. Why we made Polaris PowerShell is evolving and we want to experiment with other use cases for Pow...
DSC Resource Kit Release October 2017
We just released the DSC Resource Kit!This release includes updates to 6 DSC resource modules. In these past 6 weeks, 52 pull requests have been merged and 39 issues have been closed, all thanks to our amazing community! The modules updated in this release are: For a detailed list of the resource modules and fixes in this release, see the Included in this Release section below. Our last community call for the DSC Resource Kit was last week on September 27. A recording of our updates as well as summarizing notes will be available soon. Join us for the next call at 12PM (Pacif...