Official News page 6

REAL LIFE NEWS: ISS HIT BY VIRUS

by Hazed

Laptop computers abroad the International Space Station played host to an unwelcome guest recently, as they were infected by a computer worm that ferrets out passwords. The worm, which goes by the ungaingly name of W32.TGammima.AG, spreads by copying itself to removable media devices. Once in place, it steals the passwords to various online games.

Presumably it got slim pickings on the ISS's computers! I can't imagine astronauts spending their time in space playing WoW (although it would be cool if they played Fed).

The laptops were not considered mission critical - they were not responsible for command and control - so things could have been a lot worse. But the question remains: how did computers aboard the space station pick up the worm? It's a common parasite on the net, which has been around for about a year, but you'd think stringent security and anti-virus measures would be in place to prevent any infection from touching spacecraft of any kind. Maybe aliens did it.

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