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Joel Verhagen

@joelverhagen.com

Software dev on NuGet team, Microsoft GitHub: github.com/joelverhagen blog: joelverhagen.com

Joel Verhagen @joelverhagen.com · 24/09/2025

OIDC integration in build/deploy pipelines and in Entra ID is such a game-changer in my mind. It simplifies so much secret management and gives you the "feeling" (analogous capabilities) of managed identities outside of Azure.

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Joel Verhagen @joelverhagen.com · 24/09/2025

Azure DevOps WIF is the analogous idea in Azure DevOps land: devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/intro.... For a while, you traded an ADO minted token for Entra ID. Now you trade on Entra ID token (managed by ADO) for your service principal. But still, same idea as GHA.

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Joel Verhagen @joelverhagen.com · 24/09/2025

This can be done with the federated credentials. docs.github.com/en/actions/h... and learn.microsoft.com/en-us/entra/.... It's very cool! The mental model is that you trade a GHA OIDC token for an Entra ID token. This is allowed by configuring your MI to accept a specific pattern of GitHub token.

docs.github.com

Configuring OpenID Connect in Azure - GitHub Docs

Use OpenID Connect within your workflows to authenticate with Azure.

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Joel Verhagen @joelverhagen.com · 13/09/2025

Thanks Mattias, that's encouraging! My team did the hard work. I just happened to be on comms at the time and answering questions :) I'm excited to see it GA soon. Great combination of UX improvement (no more manual rotation of secrets) and a security win (not needing long-lived API keys).

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Joel Verhagen @joelverhagen.com · 28/08/2025

> Environment.TickCount is different from the DateTime.Ticks property, which is the number of 100-nanosecond intervals that have elapsed since 1/1/0001, 12:00am. 😑

learn.microsoft.com

Environment.TickCount Property (System)

Gets the number of milliseconds elapsed since the system started.

000