US Nuclear Weapons Agency Breached In Microsoft SharePoint Hack
The semiautonomous arm of the Energy Department is responsible for producing and dismantling nuclear arms. Other parts of the department were also compromised.
The US agency responsible for maintaining and designing the nation’s cache of nuclear weapons was among those breached by a hack of Microsoft Corp.’s SharePoint document management software, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
No sensitive or classified information is known to have been compromised in the attack on the National Nuclear Security Administration, said the person, who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly and asked not to be identified. The semiautonomous arm of the Energy Department is responsible for producing and dismantling nuclear arms. Other parts of the department were also compromised.
The agency referred questions about the attack to the Energy Department.
“On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy,” an agency spokesman said in an email. “The department was minimally impacted due to its widespread use of the Microsoft M365 cloud and very capable cybersecurity systems. A very small number of systems were impacted. All impacted systems are being restored.”
The NNSA has a broad mission, which includes providing the Navy with nuclear reactors for submarines and responding to radiological emergencies, among other duties. The agency also plays a key role in counterterrorism and transporting nuclear weapons around the country.
Hackers were able to breach the agency as part of a 2020 attack on a widely used software program from SolarWinds Corp. A department spokesperson said then that malware had “been isolated to business networks only.”
Microsoft has blamed Chinese state-sponsored hackers for the attacks, which exploited flaws in its commonly used SharePoint document management software in a campaign that has breached governments, businesses and other organizations around the world. In some instances, the hackers have stolen sign-in credentials, including usernames, passwords, hash codes and tokens, Bloomberg reported earlier.
In addition to the Energy Department, the hackers have broken into systems belonging to national governments in Europe and the Middle East, the US Education Department, Florida’s Department of Revenue and the Rhode Island General Assembly.
The full extent of the damage isn’t yet clear. The flaws apply to SharePoint customers who manage the software on their own networks, as opposed to on the cloud.
Microsoft, in a blog post Tuesday, identified two groups supported by the Chinese government, Linen Typhoon and Violet Typhoon, as leveraging flaws in the SharePoint software. Another hacking group based in China, which Microsoft calls Storm-2603, also exploited the SharePoint vulnerabilities, according to the blog.
