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USAF has shut down IT services and confirmed personal and health data were impacted by the incident.
The United States Air Force (USAF) has had to shut down several of its IT systems following a data breach impacting service personnel.
USAF said earlier this week that it was aware of a breach impacting both personal and healthcare data.
“This message is to inform you of a critical personally identifiable information (PII) and protected health information (PHI) exposure related to USAF SharePoint permissions,” USAF said in a missive shared on social media.
“As a result of this breach, all USAF SharePoints will be blocked Air Force-wide to protect sensitive information.”
SharePoint is a Microsoft product used to host, share, and collaborate information, while also coordinating workflows.
USAF also shut down its Microsoft Teams platform due to its reliance on files shared via SharePoint. Data visualisation tool Power BI has also had its dashboards disabled for a similar reason.
The Air Force Personnel Center Directorate of Technology and Information was actively working on the issue.
“While there is no exact time of completion for a solution, current estimates suggest 1-2 weeks, likely restored by the end of the post work week,” USAF said.
At the time of the email’s writing, the shutdown of the systems was due “at any moment”, and USAF warned users to back up critical files, use only secure email, and report “any suspected data issues”.
While attribution of an actor behind the incident is so impossible, Microsoft warned of Chinese hacking groups targeting SharePoint servers in July.
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.
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