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International Space Station Infected With Malware Carried By Russian Astronauts

Posted by samzenpus on from the click-here-if-you-want-air dept.

DavidGilbert99 writes "Nowhere is safe. Even in the cold expanse of space, computer malware manages to find a way. According to Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky, the SCADA systems on board the International Space Station have been infected by malware which was carried into space on USB sticks by Russian astronauts."

10 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Linux... by ZiakII · · Score: 5, Insightful

    From the article As these systems are based on Linux, they are open to infection.

    What system is not open to infection...

    1. Re:Linux... by dukeblue219 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      To geeks it sounds like an uninformed attack on linux's security, but I think what the author means to say is "these are not proprietary custom-designed systems, but are based on a common Earthly operating system and thus may have known vulnerabilities."

      --
      -Ted http://www.freemathhelp.com/
    2. Re:Linux... by UnknowingFool · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I took that as either a lack of knowledge or bias. In the next few paragraphs they talk about Stuxner which was a Windows worm. Linux is by no means perfectly secure. Nothing is. I would take the track record of Linux over Windows any day.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
    3. Re:Linux... by Skiron · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yes, WTF is that all about? Sounds to me like a MS wedge of money went to the reporter to sneak that in [quote below]

      The reason is that the space station uses computer-controlled SCADA systems in order to manage various physical components of the satellite. As these systems are based on Linux, they are open to infection.

    4. Re:Linux... by kesuki · · Score: 4, Insightful

      there are two problems with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet according to wikipedia stuxnet was to be self deleting in 2012 but is mentioned in TFA, and stuxnet doesn't affect linux systems at all. also the space station only uses linux for their laptops. so TFA is very poorly written and with no fact checking. scada is not based on linux either it is windows based so tfa is way off base. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCADA

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      https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
    5. Re:Linux... by freezin+fat+guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the author of the comments were as unbiased as you it might indeed mean that.

      However, he makes money telling Windows users they will be safe if they remember to pay him their fees. Not the same protection racket from the Linux crowd so I'm sure he's pleased to take any swipe he can.

  2. Root access? by Whammy666 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So who's idea was it to to allow a foreign USB stick to get plugged into a ISS system with root access? This seems like a major security protocol problem rather than a weakness of Linux.

    --
    When all else fails, run.
  3. Re: Oh, the irony... by NemosomeN · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If a guy on the street was screaming that the NSA was tapping the phones of world leaders, we would have called him crazy. The fact that it later came out that the NSA was tapping the phones of world leaders doesn't retroactively make that person not crazy. Or was your point "Yes, I may be crazy, but sometimes crazy people are coincidentally correct!" I'm sure there are paranoid schizophrenic people that are right now being investigated by the FBI -- but they are still paranoid schizophrenic.

    --
    I hate grammar Nazi's.
  4. Re:Oh, the irony... by Ioldanach · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The ISS is nothing more than a thinly veiled weapons platform cloaked as a space station. Rods from God is the ultimate weapon, inflicting nuclear scale devastation without the pesky fallout. Within our lifetimes expect to see an attack launched and the USA will claim that they had no part in it, when in reality they will be the instigating party with plausible deniability.

    Why would the Rods from God project require a manned platform? Especially an international crew that would be likely to discover the device and report it back to their own respective countries?

  5. Terrible Atricle, read with care by sjames · · Score: 4, Insightful

    First it spends a paragraph or two indicating that some unknown computer on ISS got a virus. That would probably be one of the Windows laptops used by the crew for personal email, general browsing, etc and NOT a mission critical part of the station itself. Those have gotten viruses before and probably will again. The mission critical systems never have.

    Then they went into the weeds spending a short segment talking about an unnamed system at an unnamed nuclear plant getting infected with stuxnet. For all we know it was the solitaire and minesweeper PC in the break room. From there they talk about government development of stuxnet and blah blah blah nothing to do with ISS, and so on.