AvoidUsingPlainTextForPassword docs do not cover all checked parameter names

[alekdavis]

I have a script parameter that holds a path to the encrypted credential file named $CredentialFile for which I get the warning:

Parameter '$CredentialFile' should use SecureString, otherwise this will expose sensitive information. See ConvertTo-SecureString for more information.

There is no reason for me use SecureString here and I cannot think of a better alternative to the parameter name, so it would be nice to suppress this message for this particular instance, but not to the whole file or project. Besides, the documentation for PSAvoidUsingPlainTextForPassword needs to include Credential and whatever other strings it gets triggered of, since it only mentions one word: Password.

[rjmholt]

Addressing your title, see https://github.com/PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer#suppressing-rules.

Besides, the documentation for PSAvoidUsingPlainTextForPassword needs to include Credential and whatever other strings it gets triggered of, since it only mentions one word: Password.

Agreed.

It seems the list of terms is:

https://github.com/PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer/blob/c78f5a60c1f49a5e767286ff6323a2ec0788991a/Rules/AvoidUsingPlainTextForPassword.cs#L34

And those terms only need to appear within the parameter/variable name to trigger the rule:

https://github.com/PowerShell/PSScriptAnalyzer/blob/c78f5a60c1f49a5e767286ff6323a2ec0788991a/Rules/AvoidUsingPlainTextForPassword.cs#L45

We would welcome your PR to update the docs here

[alekdavis]

Oh, sweet. I did not realize that SuppressMessageAttribute must be applied to params() (originally tried it next to the parameter itself and it did not help). It's perfect when applied correctly. Thanks for your help.

[rjmholt]

Reopening to track doc issue

[CptMikhailov]

Is there any movement on this? I'm encountering an issue where a parameter called $CreditUnion is being incorrectly flagged. I think that the way this is implemented should be less broad, possibly. I can look at submitting a pull request after I've had a look.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how this should be reimplemented? I'm thinking maybe a more robust set of regular expression rules? Or just having a more robust list of terms, and testing for equality instead of pattern matching.

[rjmholt]

Is there any movement on this?

Not yet; we would welcome your contribution.

Does anyone have any suggestions for how this should be reimplemented?

Ultimately this is a very heuristic rule and the idea is we can infer what should be a secure string based on the name of parameters. But most users seem to appreciate that. I think a regex is probably the way to go. Something like:

([Cc]redential|[Pp]ass(word|phrase)|[Tt]oken)$