Apparently, NASA is sending unclean builds into orbit leading to a first -- a space worm.
From hungry-hackers.com:
SAN FRANCISCO: NASA confirmed that a computer virus sneaked aboard the International Space Station only to be tossed into quarantine on July 25 by security software.
A "worm type" virus was found on laptop computers that astronauts use to send and receive email from the station by relaying messages through a mission control center in Texas, according to NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries on Wednesday. [From Computer virus goes into orbit | Hacking Truths]
The Dark Visitor blog suggests that the worm is Chinese in origin:
The trojan is also referred to as the kavo.exe virus and is designed to gather information on ten 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* * *
Will check more into the origin of this malware later today but all indicators suggest that it could be Chinese. [From The Dark Visitor ยป Chinese hacker malware infects International Space Station?]
While it may be Chinese, I'm betting it isn't an intentional attack. Unless, of course, Chinese and Korean MMOGs are popular on the space station.
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