Automating with PowerShell: Changing Modern and Basic authentication settings

A friend of mine recently asked the question on how he could edit the Modern Authentication settings in Office365. He found that when he went to the new Settings Pane for Modern Authentication he could change settings specifically to block older clients.

If you don’t know where to find this, check it out in your Office365 Portal by going to Settings -> Org Settings -> Modern Authentication;

Modern authentication settings portal 2020.

His question was how he could centrally manage these checkboxes. I explained to him that these checkboxes are actually based on something that’s existed for ages; Exchange Authentication policies. It turns out that when you change these settings a new policy is created called “No Basic Auth” and this is set as the default for the entire tenant.

So to centrally manage this it’s actually straight forward – We create our own policy called “No Basic Auth” and enable this as the default policy. From the moment this policy is deployed you’ll also be able to change these settings via the portal and they will be reflected immediately. So let’s get to the script.

This script disables all forms of basic authentication for you, so it copies the screenshot above. It’s a good plan to slowly start implementing this at all your clients – In just 6 months basic authentication is being completely deprecated with no way to turn it back on. Doing this now allows you and your clients to prepare.

The Script

######### Secrets #########
$ApplicationId = 'AppID'
$ApplicationSecret = 'AppSecret' | ConvertTo-SecureString -Force -AsPlainText
$TenantID = 'TenantID'
$RefreshToken = 'VeryLongReFreshToken'
$ExchangeRefreshToken = 'ExchangeRefreshToken'
$UPN = "UPNUSedToGenerateTokens"
######### Secrets #########

$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($ApplicationId, $ApplicationSecret)

$aadGraphToken = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId $ApplicationId -Credential $credential -RefreshToken $refreshToken -Scopes 'https://graph.windows.net/.default' -ServicePrincipal -Tenant $tenantID
$graphToken = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId $ApplicationId -Credential $credential -RefreshToken $refreshToken -Scopes 'https://graph.microsoft.com/.default' -ServicePrincipal -Tenant $tenantID

Connect-MsolService -AdGraphAccessToken $aadGraphToken.AccessToken -MsGraphAccessToken $graphToken.AccessToken
$CurrentConf = $customers = Get-MsolPartnerContract -All
foreach ($customer in $customers) {
    write-host " Processing $($customer.DefaultDomainName)"
$token = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId 'a0c73c16-a7e3-4564-9a95-2bdf47383716'-RefreshToken $ExchangeRefreshToken -Scopes 'https://outlook.office365.com/.default' -Tenant $customer.TenantId
    $tokenValue = ConvertTo-SecureString "Bearer $($token.AccessToken)" -AsPlainText -Force
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($upn, $tokenValue)
    $customerId = $customer.DefaultDomainName
    $session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://ps.outlook.com/powershell-liveid?DelegatedOrg=$($customerId)&BasicAuthToOAuthConversion=true" -Credential $credential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
$null = Import-PSSession $session -AllowClobber -CommandName "Set-AuthenticationPolicy", "Get-AuthenticationPolicy", "Get-OrganizationConfig", "New-AuthenticationPolicy", "Get-OrganizationConfig", "set-OrganizationConfig"

    $null = New-AuthenticationPolicy -Name "No Basic Auth" -AllowBasicAuthActiveSync:$FALSE -AllowBasicAuthAutodiscover:$FALSE -AllowBasicAuthImap:$false -AllowBasicAuthMapi:$FALSE  -AllowBasicAuthOfflineAddressBook:$FALSE  -AllowBasicAuthOutlookService:$FALSE  -AllowBasicAuthPop:$FALSE  -AllowBasicAuthPowershell:$FALSE  -AllowBasicAuthReportingWebServices:$FALSE  -AllowBasicAuthRpc:$FALSE -AllowBasicAuthSmtp -AllowBasicAuthWebServices:$FALSE -erroraction silentlycontinue
    $null = Set-OrganizationConfig -DefaultAuthenticationPolicy "No Basic Auth"
    Remove-PSSession $session

}

And that’s it! As always, Happy PowerShelling!

Recent Articles

Automating with PowerShell: making stolen tokens useless with Global Secure Access

Last week I watched Merill Fernando talk to Alex Pavlovsky and Marilee Tuscak from the Entra team about something I’d kinda put under the “needs a GSA licence” branch and i’d check it out later, turns out that like most people, I half-assed the documentation and it turns out it doesn’t. There’s two features that come with any P1 license; Compliant network check and Source IP Restoration. So BP, P1, or even frontline worker licenses already have this.

CIPP ❤️ #IntuneForMSPs

We’re Joining #IntuneForMSPs 🎉

Being invited by Microsoft to join a global initiative is a big moment for us, and we want to be clear about why it matters. #IntuneForMSPs is Microsoft’s program to help MSPs deliver Microsoft 365, Intune, and Copilot services at scale, and CIPP is now part of it, bringing the largest MSP community in the channel directly to Microsoft.

The return of CyberDrain CTF

CyberDrain CTF returns! (and so do I!)

It’s been since september that I actually picked up a digital pen equivalent and wrote anything down. This was due to me being busy with life but also my side projects like CIPP. I’m trying to get back into the game of scripting and blogging about these scripts. There’s still so much to automate and so little time, right? ;)