Slashdot Mirror
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."
That they need IT staff on the ISS.
Even astronauts are not smart enough to maintain and repair their computers.
Honestly though, Why the hell dont the laptops have anti virus software? if they are going to run a OS that is targeted by the bulk of viruses out there then it's dumb to send it up without AV software installed.
There is no reason for a email/nutritional PC to not run AV.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Microsoft can't hear you scream.
Yeah, my karma sucks....but so do the mods.
And to think that I hated that line. Unfortunately for the life from a meteorite theory, computer viruses are a bit more resiliant to the extremes of space.
Out of modpoints but really liked a post? 1BDkF6TtmmeZ3yqXbz9yhdYVqRYnwFoXDj
To top it all, NASA says in the same breath that they are investigating how the worm got abort and that the austronauts' laptops don't have any anti-virus software... Go figure!
What *Windows* is doing in space in the first place.
you had me at #!
that Captain Kirk picked up something nasty from those green bitches. Damn space viruses.
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.
That's what the laptop virus is there for - you can't be too careful.
Network security really isn't that hard! It isn't like it's rocket scie... oh... nevermind...
Will there be an Andromeda Strain of this Virus?
Regards, Ian
Simply disable the autorun service for USBs. That will make your computer safe from yet another of the many, many moronic ideas of Windows developers.
Also, computer viruses like those cannot be detected normally under Windows XP, but on Windows 98/Millenium (which don't have autorun for USB sticks) they appear in their full glory. AND they will screw you as soon as you auto-open one. Then you'll need to remove them from your hard disk (and of course, the virus files cannot be detected normally under Windows XP)
From Symantec's site:
It then attempts to steal sensitive information for the following online games:
* ZhengTu
* Wanmi Shijie or Perfect World
* Dekaron Siwan Mojie
* HuangYi Online
* Rexue Jianghu
* ROHAN
* Seal Online
* Maple Story
* R2 (Reign of Revolution)
* Talesweaver
Oh noes, now how will the astronauts be able to play their Japanese MMO's?
Q. Where do these NASA guys get their pr0n from?
A. Oh yeah.. the USB drive.
RutSum.com
start --> run --> gpedit.msc
... enable
admin templates --> system --> turn off autoplay
though if you doubleclick on the drive letter in "my computer" you will run the autorun.inf on the drive - so untrusted drives , explore first.
...I obey the laws of physics....
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.
I think the invisible hand of the market has its middle finger extended
--A wise old fart named SC0RN
So, on some computers which (A) have been there for years, and (B) have no network connection over which to download virus signature updates, somehow miraculously that AV software would be up to date and able to recognize the newest trojans. I don't know what AV software that is, but I want it too ;)
Or, I know, let's send Mordac up there with each Shuttle or rocket trip, to install those updates.
Oh yeah, and you so want to be up there on your own, when the retarded AV software after a buggy update decides one or more of the following:
- some critical Windows file looks suspicious and deletes it. It happened more than once IRL.
- some piece of binary data transmitted by or to your computer looks suspiciously like an obscure, outdated SQL-Server exploit, and shuts the program down and cuts off the network connection. I can personally testify that it happened to me in WoW, never mind that it wasn't on the right port, I had no version of SQL-Server installed, and it was on a connection to WoW that was on for 2 hours now and thus unlikely to be what a virus does. Or see the infamous "STARTLOGGER"/"STOPLOGGER" idiocy that made it possible for a while to disconnect anyone from IRC (and God knows what else) if they have Norton AV installed. Yeah, you so want that on a space station's computers.
- introduces a bigger vulnerability of its own than Windows has. At least one RL mass-pwnage, and of the format-your-hdd sort at that, happened over a buffer overflow vulnerability in IIRC McAffee's firewall. Or if you look in the history of Norton's patch notes, a _lot_ of them were patching old buffer overflow vulnerabilities in their AV software.
- suddenly decides that an otherwise legitimate piece of software is too dangerous, and just deletes it. It happened to me with one AV which decided that IRC is too dangerous a place and just removed my mIRC executable. Not because of some malicious code, or even vulnerability, in that version of mIRC, but just because apparently they considered it dangerous anyway. You so want to be up on a space station when such a piece of crap decides that your, say, telnet is too dangerous and must be stopped.
- loads itself in memory twice and slows everything down to a crawl. Happened to me, with an older version of McAffee's AV. Oh, and trying to stop or uninstall it, only stopped one of the copies.
- goes paranoid about protecting the user's "privacy", and prevents legitimate logins. Again, McAffee did that for me. Half the sites were so confused by whatever it did, that they simultaneously thought I'm logged in _and_ not logged in. I was starting to develop a deep empathy for Schroedinger's cat. You surely want that kind of thing randomly happening when you're trying to log into some more important thing up there.
Heh ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
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.
"I have downloaded hundreds and hundreds of records, why would I care if somebody downloads ours?" Robin Pecknold
The virus is actually an alien computer system attempting to interface with the station's computer systems.
Kirk: Spock __ Can __ you translate __ their message? Spock: Yes Captain. The message is, "Do you wish to enlarge your penis?" Kirk: Make it so...
"The laptops have no net connection .."
..
..
..
.. speculation by a slashdot reader don't count ..
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
--
"We are having a hard time understanding the how and why, but everything is working", Commander Bill Sheperd Feb 2001
davecb5620@gmail.com
> I wonder what virus was actually the first to make it to space.
Agent Smith would say Yuri Gagarin.
Come on slashdot, don't be twee, what Operating System does this 'computer virus' need to run on .. Systems Affected: Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP ...
You're being difficult. Anyone can see this is a cross-platform virus.
http://www.xkcd.com/463/
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
That's one small step for a virus, one giant leap for viruskind.
"Dave, send 40 grand to the prince in Nigeria if you want me to open the pod doors, Dave."
Table-ized A.I.
will definitely go to the first bot herder that manages to get a node on the ISS.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"ISS" doesn't use windows at all.. Most if not all of the actual hardware seem to be running on different versions of linux (mind you, quite a bit of the hardware is from around the Y2K or before, so you'll see p233s with 64mb ram running things).
The only things infected were a couple of laptops running "nutritional programs", (whatever the hell those are).. Even then, all ISSEarth communication goes through fairly tough screening, and is not directly linked to the 'net, so it's not as if planting trojans on astronaut's laptops is very useful, or challenging (seeing how the laptops weren't running AV Software, and are far from mission critical equipment).
anyway, see this possibly partial, old entry on what some parts of ISS are run on.
Most Slashdot editors have happily replaced words in my stories.
The "M$ Windoze" prose usually needs to be scrubbed out. Otherwise people would think Slashdot is run by teenagers on Prozac.
The twitter monologues. Click on my homepage and be amazed.