International Space Station Infected With Malware Carried By Russian Astronauts

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."

Linux...

[ZiakII]

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

What system is not open to infection...

Re:Linux...

[dukeblue219]

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."

Re:Linux...

[UnknowingFool]

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.

Re:Linux...

[Skiron]

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.

Re:Linux...

[kesuki]

there are two problems with this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org]

Re:Linux...

[freezin fat guy]

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.

Root access?

[Whammy666]

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.

Re: Oh, the irony...

[NemosomeN]

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.

Re:Oh, the irony...

[Ioldanach]

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 [popsci.com] 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?

Terrible Atricle, read with care

[sjames]

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.

Re: Oh, the irony...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The claim that NSA was spying on everyone was believable. In fact, I had sort of expected that happening. On the other hand, the claim that these "rods from god" can violate fundamental laws of physics, including the law of conservation of energy, to achieve "nuclear scale devastation", smells not only of thinking patterns of a conspiracy theorist but rather of sheer lunacy (or lack of high school education, or both).

Re:Oh, the irony...

[Samantha Wright]

When you see "Russian", "USB key", "malware" and "SCADA" in a sentence you should automatically think Stuxnet, which TFA talks about at length. Stuxnet, happily, only attacks centrifuges, and is generally very sophisticated about staying out of the way. The chances of any complications happening spontaneously are somewhere between "Hollywood movie plot" and "political promise."