Entra ID 53003: How to identify primary authentication when Authentication Details are empty?
We are investigating repeated interactive Microsoft Entra ID sign-ins with the following pattern: - ErrorCode: 53003 (BlockedByConditionalAccess) - isInteractive: true - AppDisplayName: OfficeHome - Authentication requirement: Multifactor authentication Conditional Access correctly blocks these requests because they originate outside our trusted locations. We have already confirmed through controlled testing that the authentication flow can reach 53003 after the correct credentials are provided. Our current problem is different: We need to determine what mechanism satisfied the primary/first authentication factor for the observed 53003 events. For these events, Authentication Details are empty: - Authentication method: empty - Authentication method detail: empty - Result detail: empty Therefore, we cannot determine whether primary authentication was performed using a password, an existing token/session claim, PHS, PTA, federation, Seamless SSO, or another mechanism. Our questions are: 1. Is there any tenant-visible telemetry that can identify the primary authentication mechanism when AuthenticationDetails is empty? 2. Can fields such as AuthenticationProcessingDetails, AuthenticationProtocol, IncomingTokenType, OriginalTransferMethod, or AuthenticationMethodsUsed reliably distinguish between password validation and reuse of an existing authentication/token? 3. If additional authentication infrastructure is used: - can PTA Authentication Agent logs be correlated using RequestId or CorrelationId? - should Seamless SSO generate a corresponding Kerberos 4769 event for AZUREADSSOACC$? - should federated authentication be traceable in AD FS logs? 4. For Password Hash Synchronization, is there any tenant-visible telemetry confirming that Entra ID actually validated the password for a specific sign-in request? 5. If this information is not exposed to the tenant, can Microsoft Support retrieve backend authentication telemetry for a specific Sign-in ID / RequestId / CorrelationId and determine how primary authentication was satisfied? Our goal is not to determine why Conditional Access generated 53003 — that part is already understood. We specifically need to identify what satisfied primary authentication before the Conditional Access evaluation.
Locked account due to many attempts from malicious IP
Hello experts, today, a user contacted me that she cannot access M365 and asked to unlock her account. 1st thing I've checked were her log-ins in MS Entra and there I've found many and many attempts to log in from different countries - like India, Russia, Demark etc... that happened with just few seconds delay.... As a result, the user's account got blocked. Had to deal 1st time with this kind of issue.... See pictures below. Now, it looks like there was another user under the same attack few days ago (who is on vacation so doesnt know he is blocked for now :)).... Anyway, wondering - how I can prevent these types of attack? We have MFA (app auth) configured so even if the password got broken, MFA should prevent the attacker to sign in. I was going to create a conditional access but there are countries like Italy, Denmark (and other EU ones) etc that I don't want to block. We have M365 E3 with M365 E5 Security subscriptions assigned to all users. Would be grateful for any advise.Warning: PIM disconnects users from Teams Mobile
I have been working with Microsoft Support on this issue for three months. Hopefully I can save others the trouble. Sometime around April 2024, I and my colleagues started seeing regular alerts on our mobile devices saying "Open Teams to continue receiving notifications for <email address>", or "<email address> needs to sign in to see notifications". Just as promised, after this message appears, we do not get notified about messages and Teams calls do not ring on our mobile devices until we open Teams. We eventually determined that these alerts coincided with activating or deactivating PIM roles. Apparently, a change was made to Privileged Identity Management in Microsoft Entra ID around that time whereby users' tokens are invalidated when a role is activated or deactivated. Quoting the Microsoft Support rep: "When a user's role changes (either due to activation or expiration), Skype AAD[?] will revoke existing tokens of that users. Skype AAD will also notify PNH about that token revocation. This is expected behavior and is working as designed. These changes were rolled out in Skype AAD in April/May 2024 which is since when you are facing the issue as well." Anyway, as far as I can tell, this change was not announced or documented anywhere, so hopefully this message will show up in the search results of my fellow admins who are dealing with this.Can the built-in "No account? Create one" link redirect to a custom sign-up page?
I'm using Microsoft Entra External ID with a built-in sign-in/sign-up user flow. On the Microsoft-hosted sign-in page, the "No account? Create one" link always redirects users to the default Entra sign-up page. I already have a custom registration page and would like this built-in link to redirect to my custom URL instead. Is there any supported way to customize the destination of this link in a built-in user flow? If not, could someone confirm whether this behavior is fixed by design? Thanks!Request to enable preview feature - Face Check with CAP
Dear Microsoft, I am on a business premium plan for my home test tenant. I cannot raise ticket nor do I have an account manager. I know this is in private preview. I would like my tenant to be enabled to test this new Verified ID feature to have "Face Check" in CAP as one of the Grant conditions. tenant id: bc85b508-0107-4472-a49c-fc8cefd4f0d7 Thank you.Risky sign-ins not showing anything
Hi, For some time already, I am not sure why but I cannot see anything in risky sign-ins in Identity Protection (MS Entra). Even when I receive a summary email (Microsoft Entra ID Protection Weekly Digest) mentioning there were risky sinn-ings detected. When I click on the risky signings directly in the email to take me to the report, I see no data there at all... When I modify filters to include all, nothing shows up either. It has been like this for few months already. Before, I could see them with no issues. Has anything changed? Or why I can't see any records?
passkeys in the Authenticator app regarding attestation
I have a question about passkeys in the Authenticator app regarding attestation in connection with QR code-based cross-device sign-in. When we register a passkey with attestation enabled in the Authenticator app, it can be used to complete the sign-in process on another device via QR code and Bluetooth Low Energy. According to Microsoft’s documentation, this shouldn’t be possible with attestation enabled, yet it works. What are we misunderstanding here? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/identity/authentication/how-to-enable-authenticator-passkey Thanks for your inputs. Johannes
Introducing the Entra Helpdesk Portal: A Zero-Trust, Dockerized ITSM Interface for Tier 1 Support
Hello everyone, If you manage identity in Microsoft Entra ID at an enterprise scale, you know the struggle: delegating day-to-day operational tasks (like password resets, session revocations, and MFA management) to Tier 1 and Tier 2 support staff is inherently risky. The native Azure/Entra portal is incredibly powerful, but it’s complex and lacks mandatory ITSM enforcement. Giving a helpdesk technician the "Helpdesk Administrator" role grants them access to a portal where a single misclick can cause a major headache. To solve this, I’ve developed the Entra Helpdesk Portal (Community Edition)—an open-source, containerized application designed to act as an isolated "airlock" between your support team and your Entra ID tenant. Why This Adds Value to Your Tenant Instead of having technicians log into the Azure portal, they log into this clean, Material Design web interface. It leverages a backend Service Principal (using MSAL and the Graph API) to execute commands on their behalf. Strict Zero Trust: Logging in via Microsoft SSO isn’t enough. The app intercepts the token and checks the user’s UPN against a hardcoded ALLOWED_ADMINS whitelist in your Docker environment file. Mandatory ITSM Ticketing: You cannot enforce ticketing in the native Azure Portal. In this app, every write action prompts a modal requiring a valid ticket number (e.g., INC-123456). Local Audit Logging: All actions, along with the actor, timestamp, and ticket number, are written to an immutable local SQLite database (audit.db) inside the container volume. Performance: Heavy Graph API reads are cached in-memory with a Time-To-Live (TTL) and smart invalidation. Searching for users or loading Enterprise Apps takes milliseconds. What Can It Do? Identity Lifecycle: Create users, auto-generate secure 16-character passwords, revoke sign-in sessions, reset passwords, and delete specific MFA methods to force re-registration. Diagnostics: View a user's last 5 sign-in logs, translating Microsoft error codes into plain English. Group Management: Add/remove members to Security and M365 groups. App/SPN Management: Lazy-load raw requiredResourceAccess Graph API payloads to audit app permissions, and instantly rotate client secrets. Universal Restore: Paste the Object ID of any soft-deleted item into the Recycle Bin tab to instantly resurrect it. How Easy Is It to Setup? I wanted this to be universally deployable, so I compiled it as a multi-architecture Docker image (linux/amd64 and linux/arm64). It will run on a massive Windows Server or a simple Raspberry Pi. Setup takes less than 5 minutes: Create an App Registration in Entra ID and grant it the necessary Graph API Application Permissions (e.g., User.ReadWrite.All, AuditLog.Read.All). Create a docker-compose.yml file. Define your feature toggles. You can literally turn off features (like User Deletion) by setting an environment variable to false. version: '3.8' services: helpdesk-portal: image: jahmed22/entra-helpdesk:latest container_name: entra_helpdesk restart: unless-stopped ports: - "8000:8000" environment: # CORE IDENTITY - TENANT_ID=your_tenant_id_here - CLIENT_ID=your_client_id_here - CLIENT_SECRET=your_client_secret_here - BASE_URL=https://entradesk.jahmed.cloud - ALLOWED_ADMINS=email address removed for privacy reasons # CUSTOMIZATION & FEATURE FLAGS - APP_NAME=Entra Help Desk - ENABLE_PASSWORD_RESET=true - ENABLE_MFA_MANAGEMENT=true - ENABLE_USER_DELETION=false - ENABLE_GROUP_MANAGEMENT=true - ENABLE_APP_MANAGEMENT=true volumes: - entra_helpdesk_data:/app/static/uploads - entra_helpdesk_db:/app volumes: entra_helpdesk_data: entra_helpdesk_db: 4.Run docker compose up -d and you are done! I built this to give back to the community and help secure our Tier 1 operations. If you are interested in testing it out in your dev tenants or want to see the full architecture breakdown, you can read the complete documentation on my website here I’d love to hear your thoughts, feedback, or any feature requests you might have!
MFA catch-22 during onboarding due to registration policy
Hi, We are experiencing a catch-22 scenario during user onboarding related to MFA. New users are required to install the Microsoft Authenticator app via our Company Portal. However, they are prompted to complete MFA registration before they can access or download anything from the Company Portal. Since they do not yet have the Authenticator app installed, they are effectively blocked from completing the MFA setup. From our investigation, it appears that the Multi-Factor Authentication registration policy is enforcing MFA registration for new users. In our scenario, this creates a circular dependency. We have attempted to exclude our office network from MFA using Conditional Access, but this does not resolve the issue because the MFA registration policy is triggered before Conditional Access policies are evaluated. Our questions: Is there a recommended way to handle MFA onboarding in this type of scenario? Can Conditional Access policies be used instead of the MFA registration policy for initial MFA enrollment?Grant Just-in-Time Admin Access with Microsoft Entra PIM
In my lab, I worked with Microsoft Entra Privileged Identity Management (PIM) to grant Just-in-Time admin access. Instead of permanent assignments, users become eligible for roles and must activate them only when needed. Steps I tested: - Configured roles as eligible rather than permanent - Required MFA and approval for role activation - Verified access automatically expired after the time window This approach reduces standing privileges and aligns with Zero Trust by securing privileged access. Curious — does your org still keep permanent Global Admins, or have you moved to JIT with PIM?
