“Backdoor” in Azure DevOps to get the password of a Service Principal

The password of a Service Principal configured in Azure DevOps in a Service Connection is a secret and hidden. But it’s fairly easy to get the password of a Service Principal in Azure DevOps. It’s not a security bug or a backdoor. It’s a side effect and by design. It looks like leaving the keys in the keyhole. This blogpost tells you how to get the password. As soon as you can use Service Principal credentials, it’s possible to connect to Azure from any laptop, you don’t have to be using a laptop in the same domain as the company. An additional advantage is that you can use the tools you love and that make you productive.

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Exception with the creation of a Visual Studio Virtual Machine in Azure without MSDN subscription

My previous blogpost shows you how to create a Visual Studio Development Virtual Machine in Azure. When you don’t have a MSDN subscription it turns out you get an exception when you create the Virtual Machine, based on the image with Visual Studio 2015, Azure SDK 2.9 and Windows 10. The exception comes up both in the portal and with PowerShell.

Create a Visual Studio Virtual Machine on Azure programmatically

There are multiple possibilities to create a development environment with Visual Studio on Azure. It can be created manually in the Azure Portal or programmatic with PowerShell.