Computer virus attacks International space station
By Jonathan Schlaffer
If there were any computers on the planet capable of being invulnerable from a computer virus, it should be the laptops on the space station. Unfortunately for NASA, it seems that one has managed to sneak onboard the station and plot the overthrow of mankind cause a nuisance for both the astronauts and mission control.
The virus in question was the W32.Gammina.AG worm which is designed to gather information from online gaming accounts. Online gaming accounts, really, have the astronauts started playing WoW all of a sudden.
It has made its way on to some of the laptops used onboard the station but it is not a threat to the command and control systems or those used for station operations, according to SpaceRef.
While there is no surefire reason why the virus is on the station, it is thought that is was transferred from some sort of flash media (USB drive) or was in the initial software load.
NASA does not provide laptops for use on the station that have virus detection software. Isn’t that lovely?
And these are the people that got us to the moon and plan to go back and to Mars. No wonder probes crash into the surface of the object it was intended to land on.
Here’s a little sticky note for NASA, install antivirus on laptops sent to the space station. Even McAfee would be better than nothing. Yeah, let’s go with that. Who wants to bet that the first Ares launch vehicle plants itself in the ground (the unmanned test, of course)?
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