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Virus-ladened laptops aboard ISS
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 28th August 2008
ISS crewmember: "Does anyone have a copy of AVG Free on their pendrives? Avast!? F-Prot?"
According to Wired, several laptops aboard the International Space Station have been infected with a password-stealing worm – W32.Gammima.AG – intended to snaffle logins for popular multiplayer role playing games. Which, I would hope, the ISS crew aren't spending the bulk of their time playing – if only for the ping times to orbit and back.
Kelly Humphries, spokesman for NASA, says this isn't the first time such a thing has happened: “It's not a frequent occurrence,” says Humphries, “but this isn't the first time.”
The good news is that the infection isn't likely to affect day-to-day life aboard the station – the laptops are used by the crew for e-mail and monitoring small-scale experiments, not running the life support systems. It's also unlikely that any networking onboard the ISS would allow laptops to come into contact with on-board systems, although Humphries rather worryingly doesn't rule such a thing out – when asked by Wired whether the laptops could share a network with the on-board control systems, he replied “I don't know and even if I did, I wouldn't be able to tell you for IT security reasons.”
The lesson to be learned from this is clear: always ensure your IT security is up-to-date, especially when you're going to be approximately 343 kilometres away from the nearest technical support – vertically.
Are you surprised at the apparent lack of data security for equipment destined for the International Space Station, or do you believe NASA has really learned that little since the days of the WANK worm? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (15)Stats: 0.051 seconds
On Linux the relevant settings would be in /etc/what/the/hell/thingy/lifesupport in an undocumented format.
Personally, I'd rather suckle at the Microsoft teat than suffocate while arguing about which distro I'm using on IRC :D
I can't imagine they give a huge toss to be honest :B
That means Heuston already has their WoW account details :D
If you don't know what you are talking about, STFU
PS: you should learn the difference between humor and serieus stuff, smilies serve a purpose...
What say we start a game of Bait the Geek?
An interesting fact that not many people realize: the crew does not have internet access. As long as the communications signal is good they can get e-mail, and the laptops are networked to the ground to enable file sharing, but access to the web does not exist on the ISS.
-monkey