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Foreign Hackers Breached a US Nuclear Weapons Plant Via SharePoint Flaws

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16 hours 43 minutes ago
Foreign hackers breached the National Nuclear Security Administration's Kansas City National Security Campus (KCNSC) by exploiting unpatched Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities. The intrusion happened in August and is possibly linked to either Chinese state actors or Russian cybercriminals. CSO Online notes that "roughly 80% of the non-nuclear parts in the nation's nuclear stockpile originate from KCNSC," making it "one of the most sensitive facilities in the federal weapons complex." From the report: The breach targeted a plant that produces the vast majority of critical non-nuclear components for US nuclear weapons under the NNSA, a semi-autonomous agency within the Department of Energy (DOE) that oversees the design, production, and maintenance of the nation's nuclear weapons. Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (FM&T) manages the Kansas City campus under contract to the NNSA. [...] The attackers exploited two recently disclosed Microsoft SharePoint vulnerabilities -- CVE-2025-53770, a spoofing flaw, and CVE-2025-49704, a remote code execution (RCE) bug -- both affecting on-premises servers. Microsoft issued fixes for the vulnerabilities on July 19. On July 22, the NNSA confirmed it was one of the organizations hit by attacks enabled by the SharePoint flaws. "On Friday, July 18th, the exploitation of a Microsoft SharePoint zero-day vulnerability began affecting the Department of Energy," a DOE spokesperson said. However, the DOE contended at the time, "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." By early August, federal responders, including personnel from the NSA, were on-site at the Kansas City facility, the source tells CSO.

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