blog.ukotic.net

If you haven’t heard of Have I Been Pwned, firstly what are you doing?  It’s a site created by fellow Aussie Troy Hunt.  Troy aggregates data breaches as they become public into a searchable database. One of the primary goals of Have I Been Pwned is to raise security awareness around data breaches to the public.

As a bit of a learning exercise to myself, I created a PowerShell Module that leverages the haveibeenpwned.com APIs.  The module contains five Functions, Get-PwnedAccount, Get-PwnedBreach, Get-PwnedDataClass, Get-PwnedPassword, and Get-PwnedPasteAccount. I like to think of the HaveIBeenPwned PowerShell Module as an Enabler. By itself it does nothing more than what the haveibeenpwned.com site does. But by leveraging the Power of PowerShell and returning the results in object format the data can be easily manipulated for many other purposes.

Installing and using the Module and Functions is very simple. Ideally you will be running PowerShell 5 or above which will allow you to easily download and install from the PowerShellGallery. If you’re not on PowerShell 5 I’d highly recommend you download the WMF 5.1 (Windows Management Framework) which includes PowerShell 5.

Installing the module is simply a matter of typing the following.

PS F:\Code> Install-Module -Name HaveIBeenPwned

Once installed you can view all the Functions available with the following command.

PS F:\Code> Get-Command -Module haveibeenpwned 

CommandType     Name                                               Version    Source                                                                               
-----------     ----                                               -------    ------                                                                               
Function        Get-PwnedAccount                                   1.1        HaveIBeenPwned                                                                       
Function        Get-PwnedBreach                                    1.1        HaveIBeenPwned                                                                       
Function        Get-PwnedDataClass                                 1.1        HaveIBeenPwned                                                                       
Function        Get-PwnedPassword                                  1.1        HaveIBeenPwned                                                                       
Function        Get-PwnedPasteAccount                              1.1        HaveIBeenPwned      

The two main Functions are Get-PwnedAccount and Get-PwnedPassword.

The first, Get-PwnedAccount, will enumerate if an account, based off an email address, has been found in the Have I Been Pwned list of data breaches.

PS F:\Code> Get-PwnedAccount -EmailAddress [email protected]

In the above example all breaches are listed where the account used [email protected] as the email address. Which is huge by the way.

The second and slightly more controversial, Get-PwnedPassword, will take a password and confirm if it has been identified in a data breach.  Get-PwnedPassword will accept a password in three different formats.  Plain text, Secure String, and SHA1 hash.

PS F:\Code> Get-PwnedPassword -SHA1 AB87D24BDC7452E55738DEB5F868E1F16DEA5ACE

In the above example a SHA1 hash was generated offline using Quick Hash GUI.  Get-PwnedPassword will then send that Password or SHA1 hash in the body of a HTTPS request to Have I Been Pwned.  Now, obviously, what can been see as the controversial part off this is not only do you have to trust Have I Been Pwned but also this PowerShell Function.

All Functions come with Help and Examples which can be view using Get-Help.  For example.

PS F:\Code> Get-Help Get-PwnedPassword -Examples

The Module and all Functions can be found in the PowerShellGallery for download.  The Module can also been found in my public GitHub Project https://github.com/originaluko/haveibeenpwned.  All code can been view and sanity checked and is free to consume.

Lastly, I thought I might show how you can go one step further from simply enumerating an individual account. Many organisation’s IT departments create and manage accounts for their staff. They also provide security awareness training in protecting online accounts. An organisation could take a CSV list of their staff’s email addresses, import that list into PowerShell, and run it against the Get-PwnedAccount Function and identify if any of their staff have been involved in a data breach.

In the below example I import a small CSV file I have created with a list of email addresses. Then using half a dozen lines of code I iterate through the CSV list of email addresses and identify all the accounts that have been involved in a data breach. Using this information I can pro-actively notify staff to review these accounts.

$emails = Import-Csv F:\email_list.csv
foreach ($email in $emails) {
    $email = $email.accounts
    $results = Get-PwnedAccount -EmailAddress $email
    if ($results.status -ne 'Good') {
        foreach ($result in $results) { 
            $breach = $result.title
            Write-Output "Email address $email has been found in a $breach breach"
        }
    }
    Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 1500
}

And sample output after running the above code.

Email address [email protected] has been found in a Yahoo breach
Email address [email protected] has been found in a Youku breach
Email address [email protected] has been found in a Zomato breach
Email address [email protected] has been found in a 000webhost breach
Email address [email protected] has been found in a 17 breach
Email address [email protected] has been found in a Adobe breach
Email address [email protected] has been found in a Bell (2017 breach) breach

Download Links
PowerShellGallery: https://www.powershellgallery.com/packages/HaveIBeenPwned/
GitHub: https://github.com/originaluko/haveibeenpwned