NASA Servers Prone to Attacks

Yesterday, NASA’s inspector general Paul Martin announced that NASA’s servers that were responsible for controlling spacecrafts were at risk from attacks. These vulnerabilities were found after an audit was done on the network. Six servers in all were found to be prone to attacks over the internet. Hackers could take remote control over the servers and disable them. The general voiced his concern about the issues, which could result in serious problems in the operations. The insecure servers also were found to have encrypted passwords, keys and other user account information which could

Not as secure as you might expect

In January 2009, hackers gained access to the JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) computer and access close to 22 GB of data from it. Another similar incident in May 2009 caused a server to be infected that was critical to missions. The server ended up making close to 3000 connections to other PCs around the world. Paul Martin emphasized the need to address these issues as soon as possible and also start a network-wide review for similar security risks.