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Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

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Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#111

Post by stackskipton »

BeetleB wrote: post #89
stackskipton wrote: post #75

As usual with all these types of posts, people go "HA HA, MICRO$OFT SUCKS" without understanding business practices that keep them afloat. Don't use Exchange? Cool, what should we use instead? Does it support 15 people all the way up to 150000 people? I used to run Exchange cluster for 70k people, is there other mail software out there complete with non-shared disk redundancy? Where the users connect to single endpoi…

How oh how did these nuclear weapons facilities manage to function in the days before Exchange and Sharepoint?

Just like everyone else before invention of Email and Document sharing? However, like every other business, no one is willing to slow down velocity for security reasons so now we are here. Unless you have a fix for "Line must go up", market pressures will always cause this.

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#112

Post by IAmBroom »

fujigawa wrote: post #7
reenorap wrote: post #5

There needs to be a law that all nuclear and nuclear-adjacent facilities have no connection to the Internet. The fact it's allowed is unbelievable.

It's believable when the industry has pivoted to pushing SaaS garbage in every place imaginable to the point that on-prem solutions don't exist anymore. Do you expect them to not use email either? Remember, the industry told us we're in a 'zero trust' world now. The network perimeter is an anachronism. OTOH you know damn well they keep the important stuff airgapped, in which case the title (and your predictable react…

I have some sad news for you, about the realities of "airgapped security" IRL.

It starts with military officers using the hallway photocopiers for secure documents, and ends with TS docs stored in a Florida hotel's restroom.

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#113

Post by inopinatus »

necovek wrote: post #95
stackskipton wrote: post #75

As usual with all these types of posts, people go "HA HA, MICRO$OFT SUCKS" without understanding business practices that keep them afloat. Don't use Exchange? Cool, what should we use instead? Does it support 15 people all the way up to 150000 people? I used to run Exchange cluster for 70k people, is there other mail software out there complete with non-shared disk redundancy? Where the users connect to single endpoi…

I see you build a case for traditional MS product in Exchange, yet this issue is about Sharepoint. Just like with Windows, Microsoft has built a moat with Exchange, but the question is why do all the companies buy into their full ecosystem, especially for anything relating to web technologies (you even bring up Exchange Web Services), because this they do really badly, and Sharepoint seems to be the worst. However, I…

I was running millions of accounts using Postfix/Dovecot on shared-nothing storage with a single MUA-facing endpoint and complex policy options, and that was over a decade ago.

Fastmail today would be much bigger again, and they’re on CMU Cyrus.

150k is rookie numbers. Perhaps that was meant ironically to satirise mediocre enterprise thinking?

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#114

Post by unethical_ban »

crmd wrote: post #94

One of the first things I do after getting an inquiry from a recruiter or friend referral is lookup the MX record for the company’s email domain. It is an anonymous one-command check to see if they’re a Microsoft shop. If they are, it’s enormous personal red flag. MSFT is very popular so I’m only speaking about my own experience, but I have learned over the course of 20 years that an MSFT IT stack is highly correlate…

Companies that don't use Outlook? All five of them?

I've seen companies with varying levels of MS product integration but Outlook is pretty foundational.

Now, if a company says they use SharePoint or Teams to store their documentation, run to the hills. Wikis or bust.

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#115

Post by pandemic_region »

crmd wrote: post #94

One of the first things I do after getting an inquiry from a recruiter or friend referral is lookup the MX record for the company’s email domain. It is an anonymous one-command check to see if they’re a Microsoft shop. If they are, it’s enormous personal red flag. MSFT is very popular so I’m only speaking about my own experience, but I have learned over the course of 20 years that an MSFT IT stack is highly correlate…

How can you see from the MX record if it is Microsoft?

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#116

Post by stackskipton »

necovek wrote: post #95
stackskipton wrote: post #75

As usual with all these types of posts, people go "HA HA, MICRO$OFT SUCKS" without understanding business practices that keep them afloat. Don't use Exchange? Cool, what should we use instead? Does it support 15 people all the way up to 150000 people? I used to run Exchange cluster for 70k people, is there other mail software out there complete with non-shared disk redundancy? Where the users connect to single endpoi…

I see you build a case for traditional MS product in Exchange, yet this issue is about Sharepoint. Just like with Windows, Microsoft has built a moat with Exchange, but the question is why do all the companies buy into their full ecosystem, especially for anything relating to web technologies (you even bring up Exchange Web Services), because this they do really badly, and Sharepoint seems to be the worst. However, I…

I used Exchange because it was what I most familiar with. SharePoint operates in similar matter with all sharding (though backend is still MSSQL with it's sharding last I checked)

Sure, PostFix/DoveCot will scale if you are doing just email. Once you add GroupWare requirements, PostFix/Dovecot are no longer in same boat.

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#117

Post by janderson215 »

pandemic_region wrote: post #115
crmd wrote: post #94

One of the first things I do after getting an inquiry from a recruiter or friend referral is lookup the MX record for the company’s email domain. It is an anonymous one-command check to see if they’re a Microsoft shop. If they are, it’s enormous personal red flag. MSFT is very popular so I’m only speaking about my own experience, but I have learned over the course of 20 years that an MSFT IT stack is highly correlate…

How can you see from the MX record if it is Microsoft?

mxtoolbox.com

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#118

Post by IAmBroom »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #40
doublerabbit wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, turning off internet connections means less-capable remote shut shut-off. Why does it have to be remote what's wrong with it being in-house? Besides a shut-off should never be able to be triggered remotely. The same goes for digital emergency shut off buttons; all should be physical. > Less-responsive power plants. What? How is remote any more responsive than physical workers being in-house? If power-plants o…

> Why does it have to be remote what's wrong with it being in-house? Nothing wrong with it being in house. But having a back-up is never bad. > How is remote any more responsive than physical workers being in-house? If the on-site workers are incapacitated. It's a remote (hehe) risk. But so is foreign hackers doing anything with our nukes. > If power-plants operated efficiently back in the 50's without internet, they…

> But having a back-up is never bad.

It is always an increase in risk, in a security sense.

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#119

Post by stackskipton »

inopinatus wrote: post #113
necovek wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you build a case for traditional MS product in Exchange, yet this issue is about Sharepoint. Just like with Windows, Microsoft has built a moat with Exchange, but the question is why do all the companies buy into their full ecosystem, especially for anything relating to web technologies (you even bring up Exchange Web Services), because this they do really badly, and Sharepoint seems to be the worst. However, I…

I was running millions of accounts using Postfix/Dovecot on shared-nothing storage with a single MUA-facing endpoint and complex policy options, and that was over a decade ago. Fastmail today would be much bigger again, and they’re on CMU Cyrus. 150k is rookie numbers. Perhaps that was meant ironically to satirise mediocre enterprise thinking?

Cool, you got a blog article detailing how that works with Postfix/Dovecot? All clustering articles I'm seeing for those involved shared storage. Fastmail is not very specific how that works.

In any case, Exchange is not just email, it has Calendaring/Contacts stuff going on as well.

Re: Foreign hackers breached a US nuclear weapons plant via SharePoint flaws

#120

Post by stackskipton »

vlovich123 wrote: post #98
stackskipton wrote: post #75

As usual with all these types of posts, people go "HA HA, MICRO$OFT SUCKS" without understanding business practices that keep them afloat. Don't use Exchange? Cool, what should we use instead? Does it support 15 people all the way up to 150000 people? I used to run Exchange cluster for 70k people, is there other mail software out there complete with non-shared disk redundancy? Where the users connect to single endpoi…

You can use hosted versions of Google Workplace or Office365 if you can’t figure out how to secure software (places like this typically can’t clearly). Additionally it enforces a separation of concerns where a compromise of your email server doesn’t lead to a compromise of the plant itself (again - clearly IT didn’t know how to partition the network into different parts).

Sure, this business should have converted to either of those and let someone else take over administration since they were clearly negligent. This is stuff that FedRAMP or it's replacement was supposed to fix but didn't.
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