diff --git a/azurelinuxagent/common/utils/textutil.py b/azurelinuxagent/common/utils/textutil.py
index 59b8fe7..c683a13 100644
--- a/azurelinuxagent/common/utils/textutil.py
+++ b/azurelinuxagent/common/utils/textutil.py
@@ -267,6 +267,9 @@ def gen_password_hash(password, crypt_id, salt_len):
     collection = string.ascii_letters + string.digits
     salt = ''.join(random.choice(collection) for _ in range(salt_len))
     salt = "${0}${1}".format(crypt_id, salt)
+    if sys.version_info[0] == 2:
+        # if python 2.*, encode to type 'str' to prevent Unicode Encode Error from crypt.crypt
+        password = password.encode('utf-8')
     return crypt.crypt(password, salt)
 
 
diff --git a/tests/utils/test_passwords.txt b/tests/utils/test_passwords.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0d995ef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/tests/utils/test_passwords.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+김치
+करी
+hamburger
+café
\ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/tests/utils/test_text_util.py b/tests/utils/test_text_util.py
index dc3de85..6f204c7 100644
--- a/tests/utils/test_text_util.py
+++ b/tests/utils/test_text_util.py
@@ -23,12 +23,16 @@ from azurelinuxagent.common.future import ustr
 import azurelinuxagent.common.utils.textutil as textutil
 from azurelinuxagent.common.utils.textutil import Version
 
+
 class TestTextUtil(AgentTestCase):
     def test_get_password_hash(self):
-        password_hash = textutil.gen_password_hash("asdf", 6, 10)
-        self.assertNotEquals(None, password_hash)
-        password_hash = textutil.gen_password_hash("asdf", 6, 0)
-        self.assertNotEquals(None, password_hash)
+        with open(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__)), 'test_passwords.txt'), 'rb') as in_file:
+            for data in in_file:
+                # Remove bom on bytes data before it is converted into string.
+                data = textutil.remove_bom(data)
+                data = ustr(data, encoding='utf-8')
+                password_hash = textutil.gen_password_hash(data, 6, 10)
+                self.assertNotEquals(None, password_hash)
 
     def test_remove_bom(self):
         #Test bom could be removed