The tally of companies and organisations compromised by a vulnerability in Microsoft’s SharePoint software continues to rise and may have reached 400, according to the Dutch cybersecurity company Eye Security, up from around 60.
Compounding matters is a new report from Bloomberg which says the US agency responsible for maintaining and designing the country’s cache of nuclear weapons is among those affected. But classified information and sensitive data from the National Nuclear Security Administration have not been compromised.
“On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy. A very small number of systems were impacted,” a spokesperson for the department of energy told Bloomberg. “All impacted systems are being restored.”
Keeping the US department of energy safe is perhaps the fact that it uses Microsoft 365 cloud systems for a lot of its SharePoint work.
Microsoft has already deployed patches for all versions of SharePoint that have been impacted by the zero-day exploit.
The flaw allowed hackers to remotely access SharePoint servers, and steal data and passwords.
Microsoft has blamed Chinese hackers for the breach on SharePoint, which is used by US government agencies and many companies worldwide. There may have been some SharePoint breaches in countries across Europe, Asia, West Asia and South America.
The American software giant on Tuesday said hackers known as Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon were behind the attacks. Also working on the exploit was another hacking group based in China, which Microsoft calls Storm-2603.
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent, who will meet his Chinese counterparts in Stockholm next week for trade talks may bring up the hack. “Obviously things like that will be on the agenda with my Chinese counterparts,” he said in an interview.
He said on Fox Business that the negotiations with China may take on a broader array of topics, potentially Beijing’s continued purchases of “sanctioned” oil from Russia and Iran.
On Tuesday, US President Donald Trump said he may meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping “in the not too distant future”.
