National Nuclear Security Administration Systems Breached in SharePoint Cyberattack

National Nuclear Security Administration and National Institutes of Health targeted in global Microsoft SharePoint vulnerability exploitation. Chinese hacking groups suspected in widespread data breaches.

A recent global cyberattack campaign, exploiting critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s on-premise SharePoint software, has impacted several US government agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).

The breaches, which began around Friday, July 18, have prompted immediate action from affected organizations and a strong response from Microsoft, which attributes the attacks to groups linked to the Chinese government.

The NNSA, a division of the Department of Energy responsible for the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, confirmed it was affected, but stated that only a “very small number of systems” were impacted. Notably, no classified information was compromised due to NNSA’s widespread use of Microsoft M365 cloud services and strong cybersecurity systems, as reported by Bloomberg News.

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