Microsoft’s Latest Circle Jerk: Exchange Online Kills the -Credential Parameter
So guess what, you pack of whining script monkeys? Microsoft, in their infinite fucking wisdom, has decided that the -Credential parameter in Connect-ExchangeOnline is about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. According to those pricks at the Exchange Online Deprecation Notice team, come March-April 2025 for you GCC/DoD/China cloud unfortunates, and some vague “later 2025” date for the rest of us poor bastards in commercial clouds, you’ll be shit out of luck if you try to use that sweet, simple username/password combo.
That’s right. No more stuffing your piss-weak passwords directly into a cmdlet like it’s 199-fucking-9. The security theatre overlords at Microsoft have spoken, and they want you to dance the OAuth tango like everyone else, because apparently storing credentials in a script was only fine for the last decade.
What does this mean? It means all those beautiful automated scripts you’ve been running from your scheduled tasks, your crusty old service accounts, and your janky-ass automation platforms are about to break harder than my will to live on a Monday morning. The -Credential parameter is being deprecated, which is corporate speak for “we’re ripping it out and there’s fuck-all you can do about it.” Your scripts will start spitting out errors that basically tell you to sod off and use modern auth.
Your options? Let me lay them out for you, not that you’ll like them:
1. Interactive/Browser-based OAuth: Because nothing says “automation” like needing a fleshy meatbag to click a goddamn browser popup every time a script runs. Perfect for those 3 AM scripts that absolutely need someone to wake up and approve a login. Strategic brilliance, Microsoft.
2. Device code authentication: For when you want to make your automation feel like pairing a fucking Bluetooth device. “Go to this URL, enter this code, and maybe we’ll let you in.” Yeah, great for headless servers in a locked datacenter, you absolute bellends.
3. Managed Identity: Azure-only, so if you’re hybrid or on-prem, you can go straight to hell. But if you’re in Azure, this is actually not shit. The system handles the token bullshittery for you. Shame it doesn’t work anywhere else.
4. Certificate-based authentication: The “proper” way, they say. Generate a certificate, register it in Azure AD, grant permissions, and then pray to the deity of your choice that it works. Oh, and don’t forget to renew it before it expires, or your automation dies a horrible, silent death while you’re on holiday.
The syntax changes from the brain-dead simple:
Connect-ExchangeOnline -Credential $cred -ShowProgress $false
To this certificate wankery:
Connect-ExchangeOnline -CertificateThumbprint “ABC123” -AppId “12345-67890” -Organization “your-shitty-org.onmicrosoft.com”
Or managed identity for the Azure fanboys:
Connect-ExchangeOnline -ManagedIdentity -Organization “your-shitty-org.onmicrosoft.com”
Look, I get it. Passwords are about as secure as a paper bag full of water. But this is Microsoft we’re talking about—the same bastards who brought you Clippy and Windows Vista. They’re not doing this for security; they’re doing it because their marketing department needed something to crow about at Ignite while ignoring the fact that they’ve just fucked over every sysadmin with a decent script library.
The bottom line? You’ve got maybe a year to rewrite every fucking Exchange Online script you’ve ever written. Test the new auth methods, update your documentation, and prepare for the inevitable day when Microsoft’s credential deprecation finally catches up with your environment and everything goes tits-up at once. Or you could just ignore it and update your CV. Your choice.
Start now, or don’t come crying to me when your mail provisioning scripts start erroring out with authentication failures that make about as much sense as a chocolate teapot.
ANECDOTE: Last week some middle-manager type came to me whining that his “strategic email automation initiative” (a shitty PowerShell script he copied from Stack Overflow) stopped working in the test environment. I looked at it, saw it was using -Credential with his own domain admin account stored in plain text in the script. I told him, “Congratulations, you’ve just experienced what we call ‘progress.’ Now go generate a certificate and learn what an application registration is, or you can go back to forwarding cat memes manually like the primitive you are.” He asked if I could just “fix it real quick.” So I fixed it. I set up certificate auth, but I set the cert to expire in 30 days and didn’t document shit. I also made sure it only works from his laptop, not the server. He’ll be back next month, and I’ll be ready with my cattle prod and a 50-page certificate renewal procedure written in Klingon. The cycle continues.
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