POP3 error -ERR Logon failure: unknown user name or bad password

[AN-Tech]

Anyone else start to get this message from Ranger and have it not able to pull in new email recently?

I suspect this is related to Microsoft disabling Basic Authentication or App Passwords again even though it wasn't supposed to happen until October. Nothing has changed on our end recently and the account isn't requiring a password change or anything. We had this happen a couple of months ago and it was failing for a few days even though nothing showed in the logs. I noticed some other people who were able to get Microsoft to admit that basic authentication and app passwords had been disabled even though they weren't supposed to and thing in the tenant indicated this.

If this is what is going on the only solution may be to get Modern Authentication working right away with Ranger. I have that request in discussion in another thread though. This one is just to find out if anyone else is experiencing this.

Thanks

[Support Team]

Yes, this should be related and Microsoft sometimes disable Basic Authentication, however, it can get re-enabled. Also, as posted in the other thread you mentioned, we'll be releasing a version that does not require basic auth anymore.

[AN-Tech]

Unfortunately re-enabling it doesn't work as it still shows enabled. Also disabling, waiting a bit, and re-enabling does not work either. We are currently stuck. Have others reported this as happening recently as well?

[Support Team]

Nope, enabling it, as described in this Microsoft's article (https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/exchange-team-blog/basic-authentication-and-exchange-online-september-2021-update/ba-p/2772210) (Under the 'Limited Opt Out' section), has always worked when MS auto-disabled it. Please review and see whether there are any differences or additional settings that are requried.

Hope this helps!

[AN-Tech]

In case it helps anyone else. Looking at the Admin Center under Settings\Org Settings\Modern Authentication showed Basic Authentication was enabled for POP3 even though Ranger wasn't working. Using the instructions from the article above and choosing to enable POP resolved the issue. So you can't enable/disable the way you would expect to you have to use the method in the article.

Keep in mind though that performing this step is a breach of your Microsoft Partner Agreement.

[partech]

Thanks AN-Tech. Your advise worked for us.

[Support Team]

Update: Support for Microsoft 365 modern authentication for Email (OAuth) was introduced in RangerMSP 30.

[racassel]

If you have not upgraded to V30 yet, as a work around, you could forward your support@email to a Gmail account, and pop from it with RangerMSP. O365 SMTP basic auth will still work for sending from RangerMSP as long as you have it enabled at O365 and files will still copy to your RangerMSP-Backup-Email Account if you have one enabled.

(FYI, back in August, Microsoft began rolling, temporary block of basic auth for 48 hours on all accounts. We must have been in the first tier of blocks, working with MS Support said "It should still working." Predictively, they shifted the blame to our environment. After 4 hours of fussing with it, we found the obscure tech note referencing the 48 hour rolling blocks. Sure enough, after 48 hours it started magically working again. O365 support was clueless about this at the time. Basic Auth is now permanently disabled at O365.