Hacker attack on Microsoft affected about 400 organizations worldwide

Hackers exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft's SharePoint servers and compromised about 400 organizations around the world. According to the Dutch company Eye Security, among the victims were government agencies, corporations and other structures, most of them in the United States. Attacks were also recorded in Mauritius, Jordan, South Africa and the Netherlands, writes Bloomberg.

In South Africa, hackers have breached the systems of an automotive company, a university, several municipal bodies and a federal agency. In addition, two other organizations remain unnamed. Details of the attacks have been reported to the South African National Computer Incident Response Team.

South Africa's National Treasury said it had detected malware on its network, including on the Infrastructure Reporting Model website. The institution has reached out to Microsoft for assistance, but stressed that its systems continue to operate without disruption.

For example, in the US, the nuclear weapons agency and many other institutions were hacked during the attack. In Mauritius, government SharePoint servers were hacked. The island's authorities, through the national cyber incident response team, have issued warnings and instructions for organizations to limit the damage from possible hacks.

As for SharePoint, it is a popular document storage and collaborative editing system that is actively used by government and private organizations. Many organizations install SharePoint on-premises to gain more control over data. According to Microsoft, it is these configurations that have become the target of hackers who bypass the protection of the company's cloud servers.

By the way, as previously reported, groups affiliated with the Chinese government were responsible for some of the attacks.