DDoS

July 21, 2025

It's another Monday, so there's another Webapp that has been hacked. This time it's Microsoft Office's SharePoint Server. The attack has been acknowledged by Microsoft, CISA and various independent researchers. It has been ongoing since at least July 17th, and was patched by Microsoft over the last couple of days. Amongst those affected are U.S. federal services and hundreds of companies.

These types of attacks happen so often that an LLM could probably generate a perfect replica of Hacker posts with near-100% accuracy, and this is what has happened here. Starting with the newer additions, a Hacker muses "why on earth would you leave your own SharePoint instance exposed to the Internet?". A good question indeed, with probably no single answer. One can assume various reasons, including laziness, botched configurations, COVID-era remote work hacks, Microsoft's convoluted and all-over-the-place guidelines, the list goes on and on.

Then, the real fun begins. "We need more Linux", state various Hackers. Some are generic in their ask of "Linux", others specify "Red Hat Linux", none really talk about what exact software would be running on this "Linux", or who maintains that software (the more memorious readers might recall a few problems with open source software from months and years past). The Hacker does not concern themselves with such practicalities, as supply chain vulnerabilities are beneath the Hacker, and Microsoft is Satan already, so who cares.

At this point, we're really getting into the weeds. Some Hackers claim that Microsoft could potentially have allowed SharePoint to be hacked, so that companies would use its cloud version. A Hacker is done with Microsoft products after this and Crowdstrike (Editor's Note: Crowdstrike is not a Microsoft product), while another asks "why didn't they just rewrite [SharePoint] in Rust?" - the solution to every security vulnerability. There's also some politicking, because Hackers are, above all, astutely aware of important things that happen in the world.