Computer Virus Aboard the ISS

chrb writes "BBC News is reporting that laptops taken to the International Space Station by NASA astronauts are infected with the Gammima.AG worm. The laptops have no net connection; officials suspect the worm may have been transferred via a USB flash drive owned by an astronaut. NASA have said this isn't the first time computer viruses had travelled into space."

Comments

One has to ask

[toby]

What *Windows* is doing in space in the first place.

Re:Solid proof!!!!

[Tridus]

Wow, someone who actually believes AV software stops viruses effectively?

NASA needs Linux

[MrSmith0011000100110]

This is even further proof that NASA(as well as most every other major organization) needs to move away from the virus laden, insecure, corporate blunder we call Microsoft. Sure Exchange is a great mail system but its still just an iteration of a wheel that was created long before it. Were a giant like NASA or Boeing or Lockheed Martin or the US Govt itself to step away from the Microsoft Corporation, we'd start to see whatever the new adoptee was (preferably Linux) take some serious light and hopefully outshine the Gates machine.

Re:NASA needs Linux

[name*censored*]

This isn't necessarily a problem with Microsoft/Windows (although they certainly could have had a better security system), it's a problem with monoculture. Each vulnerability discovered opens up mind-bogglingly large amounts of computers to hacking, so all of the black hats are focusing their efforts on one small goal (making at least one of them succeed very quickly). This also means that exploits relying on uncommon settings (ones that rely on the target having say, two separate unrelated applications installed) are researched, where they might not have been worth the effort otherwise.

Although you have a point about big companies stepping away from Microsoft. Linux is open source, no-architecture-lock-in, and comes with so many different distros with so many different default settings, that the monoculture problem would be replaced with many-more-but-easier-to-manageable problems (think "Asteroids"). The other advantage that a polyculture OS world would offer is halting the SPREAD of the virii - if an exploit relies on someone to have XYZ system/configuration, it wouldn't necessarily be able to spread through the "fire-breaks" of ABC or DEF systems/configurations (and since most home computers nowadays are Microsoft's XYZ systems/configurations, there's no "fire breaks").

Re:Solid proof!!!!

[TheRaven64]

Antivirus software is typically only effective if regularly updated. In machines that aren't networked, getting these updates is very tricky.

Re:digital genocide

[Chineseyes]

If they're not more careful, we might find someday intelligent artificial life out there... and kill it.

Yes, because intelligent artificial lifeforms will definitely be running windows Vista on an x86 architecture.

Re:Sure there is.

[TheP4st]

How about the minor detail that the Austronauts can bring USB sticks with them that have not been thoroughly checked for malware. While being an isolated environment it obviously isn't protected from security challenged austronauts.

the laptops have no net connection ..

[rs232]

"The laptops have no net connection .."

So, how do they send/receive email ..

"The laptops infected with the virus were used to run nutritional programs and let the astronauts periodically send e-mail back to Earth"

So, they do have a net connection ..

"The laptops carried by astronauts reportedly do not have any anti-virus software on them to prevent infection"

So how did they detect the 'infection' by the Gammima.AG worm ..

"The ISS has no direct net connection"

How do the laptops send/recieve email .. speculation by a slashdot reader don't count ..

--

"We are having a hard time understanding the how and why, but everything is working", Commander Bill Sheperd Feb 2001

Re:the laptops have no net connection ..

[LordEd]

I think the summary is incorrect. From TFA:

The ISS has no direct net connection and all data traffic travelling from the ground to the spacecraft is scanned before being transmitted.

Having no network connection and no direct net connection are different things. I suspect it means that the ISS has some form of network connection to NASA's internal network, but does not have any access to the Internet.

Re:Solid proof!!!!

[Your.Master]

Soviet-style public schools. That's great.
Even your radical freestateproject.org link wants the government to protect our rights. I presume this is done via a police and/or court system.

If our rights are so great, why is it that the only way you can get funding is to threaten to throw my ass in jail if I don't feel like paying for it?!?!

First, I have to interject here: are you planning to go into a barter system? Or are you hoping that everybody in free association will select a common medium of exchange?

The fact is that capitalism selects for profitability (obviously), and profitability is not necessarily the same thing as greatness. It's an optimization heuristic. It is not a truly optimal algorithm. NASA, and public schools, are attempts to tweak our heuristics to be more optimal. Sometimes our tweaks fail. That does not mean that all tweaks are inherently doomed to fail. Nor does it mean that we should abandon the basic heuristic of capitalism.

If, philosophically, you have a problem with tax-funded anything, then that's okay and you can explain that problem. But to claim that a tax-funded thing is bad because the market is necessarily better, you must first show that the market creates truly optimal conditions at all times in all places.