With all the great work being churned out for the US and the world, cyber security risk still reigns supreme. in the AI world as well. It is likely to get accentuated in the days to come as the tools remain the same for the bad actors. Private critical infrastructure and other enterprises apart, the US government and agencies have always been high on the radar of the hackers. A high profile hack provides them immense mileage, a big hack, more so the governmental apparatus directly or indirectly is a badge of honour for them.
We are all familiar with the SolarWinds hack and the Microsoft Outage at the back of CrowdStrike’s faulty implementation. Now the ghost of hack and its consequences is back with certain very concerning facts. In July 2025, Microsoft publicly disclosed that Chinese state-sponsored hackers exploited severe vulnerabilities in its SharePoint on-premises collaboration software. It is reported that the breaches impacted hundreds of organisations, including US government agencies like the National Nuclear Security Administration and Department of Homeland Security.
The hackers used a zero-day vulnerability in SharePoint. The breach and its details was made known to the world, however the tech giant omitted one crucial detail: China based engineers have been maintaining the very software that was compromised, as reported by ProPublica. Not informing such a critical fact is certainly not in consonance with the generic requirement of nations, given the very nature of impact it had created. “ProPublica, Microsoft’s internal work-tracking showed China-based employees recently fixing bugs for SharePoint “OnPrem” – the exact version targeted in the cyber attacks.
What does this revelation throw up? It raises serious questions about potential risks when foreign personnel maintain critical US government systems. The China based engineering team has been responsible for maintaining SharePoint software for years, supervised by a US based engineer. What is particularly concerning is the timing as the Chinese hackers were exploiting the SharePoint weaknesses as early as July 7. The hackers successfully bypassed the July 8 patch. It forced the company to issue “more robust protections.” Cyber security experts warn that allowing China-based personnel to perform technical support on the US government systems creates major security vulnerabilities.
SHAREPOINT HACK CHINA RESOURCE ANGLE IS AN INADVERTENT GAP OR A LACK OF COMPREHENSIVE OVERSIGHT?
Sanjay Sahay
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