iss Russian Cosmonauts Occasionally Infect the ISS with Malware

[Ice_Blue]

Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky says the International Space Station was infected by malware installed through a USB stick carried on board by a Russian cosmonaut.

Speaking to reporters at a National Press Club event in Canberra, Australia, last week, Kaspersky also said the infamous Stuxnet virus infected a nuclear power plant in Russia and "badly damaged" their internal infrastructure. Kaspersky refused to provide details or elaborate on how badly the virus affected ISS operations or how engineering crews cleaned up the mess left behind. Space can be scary enough when the system protecting you isn't infected with malware. This situation was probably even worse.

"The space guys from time-to-time are coming with USBs, which are infected. I'm not kidding. I was talking to Russian space guys and they said, 'yeah, from time-to-time there are viruses on the space station,'" Kaspersky told reporters in Australia.

Stuxnet was allegedly jointly created by U.S. and Israeli military forces to seriously damage Iran's nuclear program. (Coincidentally, that relationship is very complicated right now.) Stuxnet became public knowledge after it malfunctioned ? or worked a little too well ? and infected millions of computers worldwide.

 

 

Read more at The Atlantic Wire

[Torolol]

they should use anything but x86-64 & arm based CPU

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,

The article is incorrect. While malware does apparently get onto computers used in the space program, Stuxnet was not amongst them. There was apparently a mis-translation between a native-English speaking reporter and a non-native English iterview subject.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

[Praetor]

Hello,

The article is incorrect. While malware does apparently get onto computers used in the space program, Stuxnet was not amongst them. There was apparently a mis-translation between a native-English speaking reporter and a non-native English iterview subject.

Regards,

Aryeh Goretsky

 

Hi,

the article says that Stuxnet infected a Russian nuclear plant, not the ISS.

[Hum]

Stop uploading poRn comrade.

[Growled Member]

That's why you use Linux in these situations.

[LaP]

Stop uploading poRn comrade.

Why would they ? pron > virus infection.

[Torolol]

hmm, Zero Gravity poRn ....

haven't seen that one yet.

[goretsky Supervisor]

Hello,
 

The article in The Atlantic originally stated that it did, but was corrected in a later update.

 

Regards,

 

Aryeh Goretsky

 

 

 

[thomastmc]

Why not just create protocols for securing any data making it's way onto the ISS, or are the cosmonauts infecting the systems intentionally?

[+Raze Subscriber²]

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

I seriously doubt that cosmonauts can take USB drives up into space as they wish because, for one reason, all the cargo needs to be weighted and they know exactly how much each gram on board adds to the cost of launching a rocket into space. And those drives that they need up there for work are routinely tested.

 

It's a closed system and unless Roscosmos has a contract with Kaspersky, I've no idea how Kaspersky could get any information about what's going on there.

 

So far, Roscosmos has denied all the allegations.

 

To me, this is a PR campaign aimed at stealing the attention from the other piece of news which happened on that day - the launch of the Olympic torch into space.

[Ice_Blue]

Never thought of that, but it does make sense.

[FloatingFatMan]

I seriously doubt that cosmonauts can take USB drives up into space as they wish because, for one reason, all the cargo needs to be weighted and they know exactly how much each gram on board adds to the cost of launching a rocket into space. And those drives that they need up there for work are routinely tested.

 

It's a closed system and unless Roscosmos has a contract with Kaspersky, I've no idea how Kaspersky could get any information about what's going on there.

 

So far, Roscosmos has denied all the allegations.

 

To me, this is a PR campaign aimed at stealing the attention from the other piece of news which happened on that day - the launch of the Olympic torch into space.

 

Also, I can't see how they'd even be allowed to just stick a random memory stick into the ISS computers...  Also, do they even run Windows?

[+Mirumir Subscriber¹]

Also, I can't see how they'd even be allowed to just stick a random memory stick into the ISS computers...  Also, do they even run Windows?

 

That's a good point. One thing I know for sure is that one cannot enter Star City (aka closed military townlet No. 1, a place where all the cosmonauts live) without a thorough search. It's impossible to sneak anything in there.

[LittleNeutrino Veteran]

Earlier this year they solved that problem anyway by ditching windows altogether.

 

http://www.dailytech.com/International+Space+Station+Goes+Open+Source+Dumps+Windows+XP+for+Debian/article31527.htm

[Growled Member]

Earlier this year they solved that problem anyway by ditching windows altogether.

 

http://www.dailytech.com/International+Space+Station+Goes+Open+Source+Dumps+Windows+XP+for+Debian/article31527.htm

 

Cool story. Thanks. :)

[Xilo]

That's a good point. One thing I know for sure is that one cannot enter Star City (aka closed military townlet No. 1, a place where all the cosmonauts live) without a thorough search. It's impossible to sneak anything in there.

Just like it's supposed to be impossible to carry contraband through airport security?