China behind vast global hack involving multiple US agencies
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the suspected links to China. The Chinese embassy in Washington also did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
The Washington Post first reported Monday on the scope of the breach and that private researchers believe at least two federal agencies were affected by the hack. They later reported on the suspected links to China.
Microsoft and other private researchers probing the incident believe that hackers unrelated to China are already exploiting the same Microsoft software flaw — and more hacking groups could try to do so soon.
'It's critical to understand that multiple actors are now actively exploiting this vulnerability,' and other hackers are likely to 'leverage this exploit as well,' Charles Carmakal, the chief technology officer at Google's Mandiant, said in a statement Monday night.
Researchers at separate leading internet scanning firms told POLITICO Monday that roughly 100 organizations across the globe appear to have been hit thus far. Silas Cutler, principal researcher at internet scanning firm Censys, and Piotr Kijewski, CEO of The Shadowserver Foundation, also said that thousands more could be vulnerable to attack.
The flaws in the SharePoint software are considered severe because they allowed hackers to remotely access Microsoft customers running self-hosted versions of the service, and then burrow deeper inside their networks. The vulnerabilities did not affect those running a version of SharePoint hosted on Microsoft cloud servers.
Microsoft failed to fix one software bug in its on-site SharePoint service earlier this month, and has only been able to offer partial mitigations for additional bugs since.
A Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement that the company is both working to ensure its customers install fixes and 'coordinating closely with CISA, DOD Cyber Defense Command, and key cybersecurity partners around the world throughout our response.' A spokesperson for CISA said the tech giant has been 'responding quickly' ever since the agency reached out to it.
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