Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 456 posts

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#301

Post by reddalo »

kuhsaft wrote: post #84
tombert wrote: post #24

At the risk of massive downvotes, I have to admit that a small part of me wants this so that maybe corporations stop using Sharepoint as soon as possible. Seriously, I haven't used it since 2017, but every time I used it then it was the worst part of my day. I used to have a shirt that said SHarepoIT Happens that I would wear to work, and it seemed like the one thing I could get my coworkers agree on was that Sharepo…

It’s impossible to stop using M365 while stopping usage of SharePoint (cloud or on-premises). See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640219 Here’s just one example: Each M365 Teams Team creates an M365 Group which creates a SharePoint site and Exchange mailbox. Teams channel files are stored in that SharePoint site. Teams channel messages are stored in the Exchange mailbox. Private files dropped in Teams are stor…

The whole Microsoft 365 environment is a mess. The web interface of SharePoint is super slow and buggy.

Why do I have a useless "General" folder in the root of my SharePoint documents, which I can't delete? I don't even have access to Teams, because I'm using the Teams-less M365 subscription for EU users.

Every day I think more and more that I should just switch provider for my small company.

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#302

Post by doikor »

gottorf wrote: post #192
conception wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This though is also true in the private sector.

In the private sector, there's a slightly more direct link between job underperformance and being fired.

In most big companies you don’t really get fired for bad performance (as long as you try to do your job).

In my experience you only really get fired when the command from top comes to cut X% of the workforce (sometimes this is yearly due to stack ranking systems) but even then the best way to keep your job is not doing a good job. In actuality it is connections (being good friends with your boss)

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#303

Post by reddalo »

vel0city wrote: post #96
jongjong wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Docs and Libre Office both produce compatible documents. There's really no reason to force one or the other. It's just conflating needs. Document editing and file storage are two different tasks. It's weird that people want everything integrated. It's not much effort to just drag and drop a file into G-Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, box.com...

> Document editing and file storage are two different tasks. Not if you want to enable multiple users to be live editing the document at the same time.

I've never been able to properly work on a Word document together with a colleague. Not even once. There's always some kind of bug or sync problem.

Google Docs, on the other hand, works great when you're working together on a document. Too bad they don't have a native client.

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#304

Post by prmoustache »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #86

I have spent far too much of my life on SharePoint. Having it internet facing has never been a good idea. Not really what it is meant for, though the promo verbiage on that has changed over different versions. Some folks wanted SharePoint as their "web server", I would set that installation up entirely separted from all other instances they may have on the network.

Isn't Office365 an online sharepoint?

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#305

Post by pjc50 »

zeta0134 wrote: post #283
kuhsaft wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most enterprise PCs are Windows machines and integrate with Microsoft services easily. The only way Microsoft is going to lose the enterprise market is if enterprise PCs move away from Windows. But, for enterprises, the only reasonable migration away from Windows is Mac. JAMF Pro for Mac can be hosted on-premise on Linux. The majority of enterprise software runs on Mac. However, Macs are expensive so it's unlikely to…

This suggests that the main thing Linux needs, for broader enterprise adoption, is a much improved "log into something that quacks like Active Directory" solution. Not actual Active Directory, obviously that just contributes to the lock-in, but what else is even remotely as polished and well integrated? I suspect this is the true moat actually. Nearly every actual business has "log into our company managed authentica…

Amen .. and this has been the case for a very long time. I remember transitioning my startup employer to "small business server" (Active Directory+Exchange) over 20 years ago. Why? Email and calendaring, especially - remember this? - Blackberry integration.

Everyone above middle-manager level lives in meetings, which means that the calendar is a critical piece of productivity software for them, and they want the comforting familiarity of Outlook. Which means they get to impose that on a whole organization.

The company that should be doing this kind of integration is Red Hat, but they've never quite managed it.

The open source solution space is probably LDAP and CalDAV, but as you say, nowhere near as conveniently integrated.

AD integration and desktop management solutions rule the Windows desktop. But not Macs in an organization, which are an absolute pain to manage, and yet somehow persist.

Perhaps it's not enough for there to be a "push" to Open Source because you've been failed by a proprietary solution, there needs to be a "pull".

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#307

Post by nosianu »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #262
gottorf wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the private sector, there's a slightly more direct link between job underperformance and being fired.

And if your strategy fails, you (usually) can't raise taxes to make up for lost revenue. So there is an even more direct link between underperformance and losing money.

I don't get such incomplete, selective, comparisons.

The country can't go bankrupt and you just found another one.

Yes, when a country messes up they have to actually fix things, there is no way around it. Except getting merged into another country - like my birth country, the GDR, ended up as West Germany's problem (but its people still had to do the work).

Also, if big enough companies (and banks) fail, it is the same. Not having a string government would not help either, in such cases the companies would be the government, as we saw in even wilder times of huge companies and much less state in the US some century or two ago.

At some point in the hierarchy you have to live with not having omniscience and accept that sometimes things don't work out, and that you can't just walk away from the consequences of those failures.

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#308

Post by benterix »

poemxo wrote: post #152

We need more Red Hat and less Microsoft in the on-prem enterprise business. These exploitable vulnerabilities are unacceptable when your customers are the likes of DoD. No one considers Google anything less than an impenetrable fortress, but when it's some government entity responsible for keeping American lives safe it's like "ah yeah they probably have a vulnerable on-prem Sharepoint that could easily be pwned." So…

It all started with Novell Netware. It was a great product and companies would buy it to have centralized management. Microsoft noticed this and decided to use their power position to drive Novell out of the market by offering a similar service and have it built in in their server product line. Novell tried to fight but it didn't last long.

The protocol was proprietary and an open source implementation in Samba was very slow at catching up. If you decided to host a domain controller using it, you newer knew if a random disconnect was a network issue or the controller or the client.

And here we are. Active directory, or Entra or however they call it these days, is basically a standard way to manage users everywhere. And until a strong entity (EU?) comes up with strong backup towards an alternative solutions (we have plenty of them now), the situation will not change.

Re: Global hack on Microsoft Sharepoint hits U.S., state agencies, researchers say

#309

Post by kuhsaft »

sherr wrote: post #249
kuhsaft wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most enterprise PCs are Windows machines and integrate with Microsoft services easily. The only way Microsoft is going to lose the enterprise market is if enterprise PCs move away from Windows. But, for enterprises, the only reasonable migration away from Windows is Mac. JAMF Pro for Mac can be hosted on-premise on Linux. The majority of enterprise software runs on Mac. However, Macs are expensive so it's unlikely to…

"Hardware support for Linux PCs is poor and lacks the manageable of Windows PCs with Active Directory and GPO, or JAMF for Macs. Enterprise software usually doesn't support Linux. Linux PCs are uncommon for personal use and corporations don't want to train users how to use Linux." I would dispute the "hardware support" comment. Linux has pretty good hardware support nowadays. And "enterprise" software is a vague term…

> A comment about adding "Redhat" to the mix is not talking about desktops (necessarily) but servers and security.

Why would you use RHEL to manage Windows client machines, when you could use Windows Server/Azure and get Microsoft support?

Post reply on HN