I have a feeling I might be giving people a blogging overdose, but I’ve been playing with so much cool stuff the last couple of days. So lets get the ball rolling; I’ve finally found a method to connect to the SCC succesfully using the Secure Application model.

I’ve also found that non-partners can use the Secure Application Model too, for Exchange and the SCC. This is thanks to some people in the PowerShell Discord that inspired me to get to coding. 🙂

First off, partners can still use the older blog here to use the secure application model. This script is targeted to Microsoft Partners.

So, what exactly is the Secure Application Model?

The Secure application model is a method of connecting to Office365 services by using oauth instead of a regular username/password combination. By using oauth you use tokens instead. These tokens have a specific life-time and are revoked if they are not used.

The great benefit it gives is that you can run headless scripts, while still having MFA enabled. You won’t need to authenticate with MFA each time the script runs.

Non-Microsoft partners

To get started, you’ll need to give consent to the Exchange Application for your tenant. Microsoft uses the well-known-application-id “a0c73c16-a7e3-4564-9a95-2bdf47383716” for this. You can give consent by executing the following code:

$Exchangetoken = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId 'a0c73c16-a7e3-4564-9a95-2bdf47383716' -Scopes 'https://outlook.office365.com/.default' -Tenant $TenantID -UseDeviceAuthentication
write-host "Exchange Token: $($ExchangeToken.RefreshToken)"

After this, you should store this token somewhere safe like an Azure Keyvault or password manager. With this token we can start connecting to resources.

Connecting to the Security center can be done with the following code. If you want to connect to both Exchange, and the Security center you will have to use a different token for each, as the token gets invalidated after use by one of the applications.

$ExchangeRefreshToken = 'ExchangeRefreshToken'
$UPN = "Exisiting-UPN-with-Permissions"

$token = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId 'a0c73c16-a7e3-4564-9a95-2bdf47383716'-RefreshToken $ExchangeRefreshToken -Scopes 'https://outlook.office365.com/.default'
$tokenValue = ConvertTo-SecureString "Bearer $($token.AccessToken)" -AsPlainText -Force
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($upn, $tokenValue)

$SccSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://ps.compliance.protection.outlook.com/powershell-liveid?BasicAuthToOAuthConversion=true&DelegatedOrg=$($customerId)" -Credential $credential -AllowRedirection -Authentication Basic
import-session $SccSession -disablenamechecking -allowclobber

To connect to Exchange, you can use this code.

$ExchangeRefreshToken = 'ExchangeRefreshToken'
$UPN = "Exisiting-UPN-with-Partner-Permissions"

$token = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId 'a0c73c16-a7e3-4564-9a95-2bdf47383716'-RefreshToken $Exchangetoken -Scopes 'https://outlook.office365.com/.default'
$tokenValue = ConvertTo-SecureString "Bearer $($token.AccessToken)" -AsPlainText -Force
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($upn, $tokenValue)

$session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://ps.outlook.com/powershell-liveid?BasicAuthToOAuthConversion=true" -Credential $credential -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $session -AllowClobber -DisableNameChecking

And that’s it for non partners. With this you can run unattended, headless scripts for O365 as a non-microsoft partner. You will need to install the PartnerCenter module to create the authentication tokens.

Partner Methods

After you collect your tokens, you can use this method to connect to the Security Center using the Secure Application Model for partners. This allows your to connect to each tenant under your administration.

$ApplicationId = 'YourApplicationID'
$ApplicationSecret = 'ApplicationSecret' | Convertto-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
$TenantID = 'Your-tenantID'
$RefreshToken = 'RefreshToken'
$ExchangeRefreshToken = 'ExchangeRefreshToken'
$UPN = "Exisiting-UPN-with-Partner-Permissions"

$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($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
$customers = Get-MsolPartnerContract -All
foreach($customer in $customers){
$customerId = $customer.DefaultDomainName
$token = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId 'a0c73c16-a7e3-4564-9a95-2bdf47383716'-RefreshToken $ExchangeRefreshToken -Scopes 'https://outlook.office365.com/.default'
$tokenValue = ConvertTo-SecureString "Bearer $($token.AccessToken)" -AsPlainText -Force
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($upn, $tokenValue)
$SccSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://ps.compliance.protection.outlook.com/powershell-liveid?BasicAuthToOAuthConversion=true&DelegatedOrg=$($customerId)" -Credential $credential -AllowRedirection -Authentication Basic
import-pssession $SccSession -disablenamechecking -allowclobber
#YourCommands here

#/End of Commands

}

The rest of the partner methods remain the same, unless you want to connect to both the Security center and Exchange at the same time, then use the following code.

$ApplicationId = 'YourApplicationID'
$ApplicationSecret = 'ApplicationSecret' | Convertto-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
$TenantID = 'Your-tenantID'
$RefreshToken = 'RefreshToken'
$ExchangeRefreshToken = 'ExchangeRefreshToken'
$UPN = "Exisiting-UPN-with-Partner-Permissions"

$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($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
$customers = Get-MsolPartnerContract -All
foreach ($customer in $customers) {

    $customerId = $customer.DefaultDomainName

    write-host "Connecting to the Security Center for client $($customer.name)"
    $SCCToken = New-PartnerAccessToken -ApplicationId 'a0c73c16-a7e3-4564-9a95-2bdf47383716'-RefreshToken $ExchangeRefreshToken -Scopes 'https://outlook.office365.com/.default'
    $SCCTokenValue = ConvertTo-SecureString "Bearer $($SCCToken.AccessToken)" -AsPlainText -Force
    $SCCcredential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($upn, $SCCTokenValue)
    $SccSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://ps.compliance.protection.outlook.com/powershell-liveid?BasicAuthToOAuthConversion=true&DelegatedOrg=$($customerId)" -Credential $SCCcredential -AllowRedirection -Authentication Basic
    import-session $SccSession -disablenamechecking -allowclobber
    #YourCommands here

    #/End of Commands

    Remove-session $SccSession
    write-host "Connecting to the Exchange managed console for client $($customer.name)"

    Write-host "Enabling all settings for $($Customer.Name)" -ForegroundColor Green
    $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
    $credentialExchange = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($upn, $tokenValue)

    $ExchangeOnlineSession = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri "https://ps.outlook.com/powershell-liveid?DelegatedOrg=$($customerId)&BasicAuthToOAuthConversion=true" -Credential $credentialExchange -Authentication Basic -AllowRedirection -erroraction Stop
    Import-PSSession -Session $ExchangeOnlineSession -AllowClobber -DisableNameChecking
    #YourCommands here

    #/End of Commands
    Remove-PSSession $ExchangeOnlineSession
}

And that’s it! I hope that helps partners and non-partners alike. As always, Happy PowerShelling. 🙂