Need to Know podcast–Episode 206

A short sharp episode focusing on the latest news and updates from Microsoft Build. Brenton and I cover off all the Microsoft Cloud news, good and bad as there is unfortunately some bad news to report in recent experiences with Azure. However, there is also lots of good news about updates to your favourite services. Tune in and give us your feedback.

This episode was recorded using Microsoft Teams

Take a listen and let us know what you think – feedback@needtoknow.cloud

You can listen directly to this episode at:

https://ciaops.podbean.com/e/episode-206-ghost-in-the-machine/

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Don’t forget to give the show a rating as well as send us any feedback or suggestions you may have for the show.

Resources

@contactbrenton

@directoria

CIAOPS Patron program

Azure cheat sheet

Azure global outage

What’s new in Microsoft 365 user management

New people centered experiences in Microsoft 365

Microsoft Edge – All the news from Build

Minimize distractions and stay focused with AI powered updates in Microsoft 365

Script to disable direct Shared Mailbox logins

A while back I spoke about

The Insecurity of Shared Mailboxes

and how that even though they have an Azure AD Account they should have their logins disabled and access rights ONLY provided via the mailbox.

To make things easier for people I have now created a script that will allow you to view and potentially disable the direct logins for all your shared mailboxes to make them more secure.

The scripts requires that you are already connected to both Exchange Online and Azure AD.

At the top of the script, you’ll find a variable called $secure. If that is set to $false then no changes will be made to your environment, you’ll just get a report like shown above. Shared mailboxes that have direct login enabled will be displayed in red.

Now, if you change the variable $secure to $true then any shared mailbox that is currently enabled for direct connection will have that ability disabled. The output will display two lines for each mailbox that has direct access enabled. The first line indicates that direct logins are enabled and then the second line will show that has now been secured. In this scenario, all that is happening is that the shared mailbox identity is simply being blocked as I outlined in my earlier article.

The last possibility is that the shared mailboxes direct logins have already been disabled, and in this case the results of the script should simply show that result in green.

In summary then, you can run this script with the variable $secure set to $false to just display the direct login condition of your shared mailboxes. You can run this script with $secure set to $true and then not only will the direct login condition of the shared mailboxes be reported but they will all then be blocked for direct login.

You will find this script in my GitHub Office 365 repository at:

https://github.com/directorcia/Office365/blob/master/o365-exo-sharedblock.ps1

The insecurity of shared mailboxes

Shared mailboxes are a really handy component of Microsoft 365 in that they allow multiple users to access a single mailbox. This works really well for generic accounts like info@, accounts@, etc. However, there are some security issues with these that I don’t think many people are aware of.

The first point to note is that shared mailboxes in Microsoft 365 actually have a login and password. Thus, they can be accessed directly using these details. Don’t believe me? Well check out the following documentation:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/admin/email/create-a-shared-mailbox?view=o365-worldwide#block-sign-in-for-the-shared-mailbox-account

which says:

“Every shared mailbox has a corresponding user account. Notice how you weren’t asked to provide a password when you created the shared mailbox? The account has a password, but it’s system-generated (unknown). You aren’t supposed to use the account to log in to the shared mailbox”

So, by default, when you create a shared mailbox you are actually creating an account with a system password in your environment. No so bad you think right? Well, the problem is that, by default, IMAP and POP3 are enabled on all mailboxes, including shared ones.

Some actually use this IMAP ability to be able to open shared mailboxes on mobile devices, however doing this comes with a huge risk in my books.

Why? Well, if IMAP is enabled, that means basic authentication is enabled and that is bad as I have said previously:

Disable basic auth to improve Office 365 security

You may feel an unknown system or complex password on a shared mailbox is good enough but to remote bad actors running automated cracking programs against accounts on your tenant, it is only a matter of time until they generate a matching password for that shared mailbox. Once they have that, boom, they’re into that mailbox. From that foothold, they can then launch all types of attacks, but the most likely being phishing your users. It’s all down hill from there!

If you use shared mailboxes on mobile devices, this means you have to know the password for the shared mailbox prior to configuration on the mobile device. Because the shared mailbox has an account, it can have it’s password changed. That means, if you want to use shared mailboxes on mobile devices, you reset the password for the shared mailbox so you know it. You then give that to users so they can configure access on their phones. Anyone else see a problem here? You are providing multiple people access to a single resource with a shared password. What is a shared password? It ain’t a secret for sure now is it? So, what happens when a user leaves the business? I’ll bet most businesses don’t go and reset the password on all the shared mailboxes that user had access to. This means you now have someone outside your business who has a login (shared mailbox email address) and password to a resource in your tenant.

Here’s a scenario where that came back to bite the business. A disgruntled user was terminated and their individual login account was disabled. After the user has fired, they connected back into a shared mailbox directly using IMAP and started sending all sorts of nasty emails to all staff from this mailbox. Now if they had been smart, they would have done this from an anonymous IP address, not one assigned to them from their ISP so we could track them down. However, the damage was done. Why? All because access to the shared mailbox was permitted by insecure protocols and shared passwords.

Edit sign-in status flyout in the M365 admin center

As with most things security, it is pretty easy to protect yourself from this BUT it requires changing the defaults. The easiest way is to:

Block sign-in for the shared mailbox account

along with disabling IMAP, POP and basic auth. Yes, I fully appreciate that may have productivity ramifications, so you need to balance up the risk. However, given how easily this can be exploited, and the damage it could to the business, I’d rather be in the safe and secure camp than the ‘it’ll never happen to us’ blind faith camp personally. Anything that allows anonymous external users the ability to access accounts externally and allows them to keep guessing passwords as you can with IMAP spray attacks is very, very bad in my books. If you read this article:

https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/threat-actors-leverage-credential-dumps-phishing-and-legacy-email-protocols

make sure you note the very last paragraph which says:

“Update, March 21, 2019: This post has been updated to reflect specific cases in which IMAP-based password-spraying attacks were successful, particularly as threat actors targeted shared service accounts, (e.g., hr@company[.]com or helpdesk@company[.]com) or exploited weaknesses in MFA implementations and third-party email client logins.”

So please, secure your shared mailboxes NOW! If you really, really need shared mailbox access on mobile devices I would suggest you use Office 365 groups instead until Microsoft enables shared mailboxes natively on mobile devices (which is on the roadmap).

How I protect my parents using Microsoft 365

I’m sure there are many of us out there that continue to provide free unpaid support for our family members. Well, many it isn’t so much free, as a ‘barter’ arrangement in that every time I’m on site I get fed. That type of compensation may of course vary in your particular situation but many IT Pros are expected to support our own family as they use technology. That can be extremely challenging if you don’t do it right. Thanks to the tools available in the Microsoft Cloud, you can quite easily!

One of the benefit of doing security right for your family is that it is going to drastically reduce the amount of support calls you receive. So here’s some of the stuff I do:

1. Everyone has Microsoft 365 Business

This one license ensures that they have commercial grade email and the latest version of Office on their desktops. It ensures that they have both Safe Links and Safe Attachments for their mailboxes to protect against inbound malware and viruses.

2. Everyone runs the latest version of Windows 10 Professional on their desktop

Windows Home has lots of limitations and does not allow connection to Azure AD. Thus, all machines are Windows 10 Professional and all machines update automatically.

3. All machines are joined to Azure AD

I don’t want to have a traditional on premises domain controller to manage these Window 10 machine. By joining all the Windows 10 Professional workstations directly to Azure AD I get the management, security and control that I want all from the cloud.

4. All machines have Intune compliance and configuration policies applied

Thanks to Intune, which is part of Microsoft 365 Business, at a glance I can ensure all the machines, including my own, are compliant and configured appropriately.

5. All machines only use Windows Defender as their AV

Windows Defender is the best solution for AV in my experience. I can manage many settings thanks to Intune, although I would like some more I would admit, but I have never had an viruses or malware issues wince ditching third party AV providers a number of years ago. I am considering potentially upgrading to Windows Defender ATP but it is probably not worth the investment given the other steps I am already taking.

6. All machines are covered by Azure AD Premium P1

Azure AD Premium P1 is an add on to Microsoft 365 Business but has a number of very, very handy security features that I use to keep everyone safe.

7. Conditional access is limiting access to devices via IP address

One of the features that Azure AD Premium P1 provides is the ability to set conditional access policies. I have restricted access to my parents logins to be ONLY available on two unique IP addresses, theirs and mine. This means that if they were phished and gave up their logins a remote user would be prevented from logging in thanks to these conditional access policies as they are not connecting from these allowed IP addresses.

In my own personal cases, I also use conditional access policies but I have them set a little broader, typically limited to allowing access just from Australia. If I travel, I need to temporarily adjust the policy to accommodate where I’ll be and then set it back to just Australia when I return.

8. All POP and IMAP access has been disabled to all mailboxes

The most common way that random bad actors on the Internet are trying to gain access to accounts is using IMAP and POP3 as you can see from a recent log above. Conversely, all Microsoft 365 mailboxes have both POP3 and IMAP enabled for all mailboxes by default unfortunately. No user needs to access mail via old protocols and thus it is disabled across the tenant.

9. Basic authentication has been disabled on the tenant

Because I have modern devices and software connecting to my information, as I have said before:

Disable basic auth to improve Office 365 security

‘nuff said.

10. All accounts have Multi Factor enabled

All accounts have the requirement for MFA on them. Now, my parents don’t have smart phones or devices other than their PC’s, so how do they access their accounts using MFA? Well, they actually don’t! See item 11 as to how I achieve this.

11. Trusted IPs have been enabled

Once again, thanks to magic of Azure AD Premium P1, I am able to implement Trusted IPs. This means that when a login request comes from a configured Trusted IP the user will not be prompted for MFA even if the account requires it. Thus, thanks to the locations I have already set up with Conditional Access I can also use these same IP addresses to configure Trusted IPs for my parents logins. This means, that their accounts ARE protected by MFA but since they are always logging in from a single IP address that is now trusted, they WON’T be asked for MFA. This, makes it easy on them and hard on the bad guys.

12. I have Office 365 Cloud App Discovery

Again, thanks to the wonders of Azure AD P1 I have Cloud App Discovery which enables me a far more granular logging of events in my tenant. I can see exactly what my parents are actually doing.

I’ve talked about the benefits of Cloud App Security before:

A great security add on for Microsoft 365

and recommend you have it.

13. All machines use password-less Windows Hello logins

All the machines are using Windows Hello, either biometric or a PIN to access the machines. No complex passwords to remember, just a simple PIN number or just sitting in front of the machine now gives my parents access to their desktops. It couldn’t be easier and yet secure.

There are a lot more actions I take on my production tenant to ensure it is secure but the above items are the ones that most affect and protect my parents and their information. As you can see, via the implementation of Microsoft Cloud technologies I have made it both super secure and super easy for them. In most cases they don’t even realise what I’ve done, and that’s the way it should be.

Now, if I can do this for my parents, why are you not doing the same for your business users? Eh?

MSP Microsoft Partner MFA request

I’m not a Managed Service Provider (MSP) but there are lot of them inside the CIAOPS Patron community so I understand the challenges they have. Their role is typically to provide managed of customers technology, including things like Microsoft 365 and Azure. To perform that role they will typically need global administrator access to the clients tenant. They may need this access across multiple tenants.

Best practices is always to ensure you secure global administrator access via Multi Factor Authentication (MFA). This means, when you log into an account you’ll be prompted to verify your identity using a second factor like a code from an app on a mobile device. As I have detailed previously:

Using multiple authenticator apps with a single Microsoft 365 user account

you can have multiple ‘tokens’ to verify an account. If you want all of these tokens to be unique the current Azure AD arrangements are:

“Your users can now have up to five devices across the Authenticator app, software OATH tokens, and hardware OATH tokens.”

per – https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Azure-Active-Directory-Identity/Hardware-OATH-tokens-in-Azure-MFA-in-the-cloud-are-now-available/ba-p/276466

That arrangement is generally fine if only one person is logging into an account but is a problems if you an MSP.

Why? Because you’ll typically have multiple technicians all needing to potentially manage a customers account. You want them to do this from a single global administrator account, however you want each technician to use a different token when they login. That way, if a technicians device gets lost or a technician leaves you merely revoke that one unique token. So, in the case where an MSP needs more than 5 tokens (say 1 for MSP and 4 for technicians) there is going to be an issue. For example what happens when you have 7 technicians say? Yes, there are ways around this but they are messy, cumbersome and inefficient as well as being more insecure I would suggest.

The ask here then is for the ability to increase the amount of tokens beyond 5 for a single account. I would suggest that perhaps the best way to accomplish this is only via a unique PowerShell command and not via the GUI. I also however suggest that a better idea would be to have a new unique global admin role in a tenant, say called “Partner Global Administrator”, that would allow more than 5 tokens. No other administrator could have this enabled, only this unique account. I would also suggest that this unique “Partner Global Administrator” also only be available in tenants that use CSP program from Microsoft. Thus, if the MSP is a CSP partner they will see this special role in the tenant. They then run a PowerShell script if needed and the number of tokens available on that account is increased up to say 20.

I also think that there is number of other benefits that a special “Partner Global Administrator” role could provide but for this request I want to stick to allowing the number security tokens be increased beyond 5.

I believe this request will help the many MSPs globally who manage a significant number of tenants for customers. Making it easier for MSPs to be secure and manage multiple customers more efficiently is a win for everyone.

Using the Microsoft Graph Explorer

According to:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/overview

the Microsoft Graph is:

The gateway to data and intelligence in Microsoft 365. Microsoft Graph provides a unified programmability model that you can use to take advantage of the tremendous amount of data in Office 365, Enterprise Mobility + Security, and Windows 10.

In essence, it can give you access to a range of data about your Microsoft cloud environment. You can explore this data quickly and easily via a web page.

If you navigate to the URL:

https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/graph/graph-explorer

You will see the Microsoft Graph Explorer as shown above. You can then select the button on the left to Sign in with Microsoft using your Microsoft 365 credentials.

You will then be prompted to login to your tenant as normal, after which you will see a consent acceptance as shown above. This is basically granting the logged in user access to the areas of the Microsoft Graph for your tenant. Select Accept to continue.

You should again see the Graph Explorer as shown above but in the top left you should now see the account you used to sign in. Just below that you will notice a hyperlink modify permissions which you should select if you want to access different areas of the Graph information for your tenant.

In this case, if you want to access security alerts from the Graph you’ll need to select this.

Scroll down through the window that appears and check the following two options as shown above:

SecurityEvents.ReadAll

SecurityEvents.RewadWrite.All

Then select the Modify Permissions button at the bottom of the screen.

You’ll then be prompted to log back into the tenant again because the permissions you require have changed and are only updated after you login to a session.

When you do re-login, you’ll be greet with a consent window again as shown above for the additional security permissions you just selected. Select Accept to continue. This consent option only appears once if you select to accept.

If you go back in and look at your permissions you’ll see the ones you selected are now Consented as shown above.

If you change the URL line in the Explorer to read:

https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/alerts

and then select the Run Query button to the right, after a few moments you will see the Response Preview area below fill with information.

If you take a close look at this information you’ll see that it contains security alert information. The case above from Microsoft Cloud App Security (MCAS) and reports “Activity from an Infrequent country” as you can see.

Why is this important? Couldn’t you view this same information from the admin console? Probably, but using the Graph provides a since entry point to queries for all this kinds of information, from all different sources in you tenant. You don’t need to jump between different browser windows. You don’t need to load different PowerShell modules. It is all in one place that you can query through a web request. Now, doing this via a browser and the Graph Explorer is only designed to show you what is possible using the Graph. Not only can we browse information using the Graph Explorer as shown here, you can also use PowerShell. That will be the subject of upcoming articles, and that is where things start to get really interesting!

Need to Know podcast–Episode 204

I’m back from MVP Summit and we have a huge amount of news to cover off in this episode. You’ll hear about the latest in Office 365 ATP, Windows Virtual Desktop, the new Microsoft Edge Browser and so much more. So much in fact that we had to hold a lot of material off until our next episode. However, don’t fear, you’ll get the most important stuff right here, so tune in and let us know what you think.

Podcast recording done using Microsoft Teams