Powershell - Masking a line with secure string causing - powershell

Question

To log into something, I have to enter a username on page1, password on page2, then click submit on page3. To make it easier I wrote a PS script. I double checked it by hard-coding the password, and it was successful.
But not wanting to hard-code the password I used the added $pass and how to read it. But now I get invalid password when I run the script.
I wanted to use Get-Credentials, but didn't know how to just pass in the username or password on their specific pages.
I would appreciate any advice to help me in the right direction towards my goal.
$pass = Read-Host 'd\P What is your password?' -AsSecureString
[Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::PtrToStringAuto(
[Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal]::SecureStringToBSTR($pass))
$IE = New-Object -ComObject InternetExplorer.Application
$URL = 'https://website/'
$IE.Visible = $true
$IE.Navigate($URL)
While ($IE.Busy -eq $true) {Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 1000}
$ie.Document.getElementById('DATA').value = "P0523586"
$Submit = $ie.Document.getElementsByTagName('Input') | ? {$_.Type -eq "Submit"}
$Submit.click()
While ($IE.Busy -eq $true) {Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 1000}
$ie.Document.getElementById('DATA').value = "$pass"
$Submit = $ie.Document.getElementsByTagName('Input') | ? {$_.Type -eq "Submit"}
$Submit.click()
While ($IE.Busy -eq $true) {Start-Sleep -Milliseconds 1000}
$Submit = $ie.Document.getElementsByTagName('Input') | ? {$_.Type -eq "Submit"}
$Submit.click()

Answer 1

Get-Credential is a good way to go about this as you aren't storing anything that should be kept secure in the script.
It's easiest to assign the Object returned from Get-Credentials to a variable:
$credentials = Get-Credential
You can then use $credentials.UserName to retrieve the username:
PS> $credentials.UserName
myusername
And $credentials.Password to retrieve Secure Password Object
PS> $credentials.Password
System.Security.SecureString
This can be used by other PowerShell commands, but needs to be decoded (made un-secure) before it can be sent to a process that cannot accept secure password objects.
To retrieve the password in plain-text, you can use the GetNetworkCredential method like this:
PS> $credentials.GetNetworkCredential().Password
mypassword
In your script you would add $credentials = Get-Credential at the start of your script, and submit the username/password to the form like this:
$ie.Document.getElementById('DATA').value = $credentials.UserName
$ie.Document.getElementById('DATA').value = $credentials.GetNetworkCredential().Password