Microsoft advises to keep a “breakglass” account for environments in case of a major cell malfunction or other emergency situations. Our worry about these accounts has always been how to check if they have not been compromised or even used in anyway.

I’ve created the following two scripts for this. These scripts are for two cases:

• The first script is to check the status of break glass accounts in general.
• The second script is to check the logon status of any admin account.

The second script was designed for just-in-time administration. We have partner access to all of our clients so we don’t need admin accounts, normally speaking. The only problem with this is that some items such as the Security Center cannot be used by partner administrators or delegated access. To get access to these parts we create a temporary admin. We alert on -ANY- logged on admin.

Break-glass monitoring

#We match on the following account. prefix all your breakglass accounts with this. e.g. "Breakglass-1234321"
$BreakGlassUser = "Breakglass*"
############################################################
$ApplicationId         = 'xxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxx'
$ApplicationSecret     = 'TheSecretTheSecrey' | Convertto-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
$TenantID              = 'YourTenantID'
$RefreshToken          = 'RefreshToken'
$ExchangeRefreshToken  = 'ExchangeRefreshToken'
$upn                   = 'UPN-Used-To-Generate-Tokens'
#############################################################
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($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) {
  $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
  Import-PSSession $session -allowclobber -DisableNameChecking
  $startDate = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
  $endDate = (Get-Date)
  $Logs = @()
  Write-Host "Retrieving logs for $($customer.name)" -ForegroundColor Blue
  do {
    $logs += Search-unifiedAuditLog -SessionCommand ReturnLargeSet -SessionId $customer.name  -ResultSize 5000 -StartDate $startDate -EndDate $endDate -Operations UserLoggedIn
    Write-Host "Retrieved $($logs.count) logs" -ForegroundColor Yellow
  }while ($Logs.count % 5000 -eq 0 -and $logs.count -ne 0)
  Write-Host "Finished Retrieving logs" -ForegroundColor Green
  $logs | Select-Object UserIds, Operations, CreationDate | Where-Object {$_.UserIds -like $BreakGlassUser}
}

Just-In-Time Admin logging

 ############################################################
$ApplicationId         = 'xxxx-xxxx-xxx-xxxx-xxxx'
$ApplicationSecret     = 'TheSecretTheSecrey' | Convertto-SecureString -AsPlainText -Force
$TenantID              = 'YourTenantID'
$RefreshToken          = 'RefreshToken'
$ExchangeRefreshToken  = 'ExchangeRefreshToken'
$upn                   = 'UPN-Used-To-Generate-Tokens'
#############################################################
$credential = New-Object System.Management.Automation.PSCredential($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) {
  $adminaccounts  = (Get-MsolRoleMember -TenantId $customer.tenantid -RoleObjectId (Get-MsolRole -RoleName "Company Administrator").ObjectId).EmailAddress
  $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
  Import-PSSession $session -allowclobber -DisableNameChecking
  $startDate = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
  $endDate = (Get-Date)
  $Logs = @()
  Write-Host "Retrieving logs for $($customer.name)" -ForegroundColor Blue
  do {
    $logs += Search-unifiedAuditLog -SessionCommand ReturnLargeSet -SessionId $customer.name  -ResultSize 5000 -StartDate $startDate -EndDate $endDate -Operations UserLoggedIn
    Write-Host "Retrieved $($logs.count) logs" -ForegroundColor Yellow
  }while ($Logs.count % 5000 -eq 0 -and $logs.count -ne 0)
  Write-Host "Finished Retrieving logs" -ForegroundColor Green
  $logs | Select-Object UserIds, Operations, CreationDate | Where-Object {$_.UserIds -in $AdminAccounts}
}

As always my suggestion would be to use your RMM system for monitoring these on a regular basis. We run the scripts every 30 minutes. You’ll have to modify them for your own RMM of course.

And that’s it! as always, Happy PowerShelling.

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Kelvin Tegelaar

I am a Microsoft Certified System Engineer working as the CTO of the Managed Services Provider Lime Networks B.V. in the Netherlands. I mostly enjoy automating business processes by deploying PowerShell solutions, but just have a large passion for Microsoft Technology in general.

If you want to contact me directly you can find me on twitter here, or via email: Kelvin {at} limenetworks.nl

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