Virus: Russian cosmonaut accidentally infected the International Space Station with a USB stick

It’s the last place you want to be if a computer virus is attacking your systems.

The International Space Station (ISS), orbiting 220 miles above Earth, is scary enough without cyber attacks damaging the computers.

But that’s exactly what the ISS team were faced with when a Russian cosmonaut accidently infected the spacecraft’s computer systems with an unspecified virus earlier this year.

The space guys from time-to-time are coming with USBs, which are infected,’ Russian security expert Eugene Kaspersky told reporters at the National Press Club event in Canberra, Australia.

I'm not kidding. I was talking to Russian space guys and they said, “yeah, from time-to-time there are viruses on the space station”,’ Mr Kaspersky said.

The ISS’ control systems used to operate on Windows XP before moving over to Linux.

This mean that astronauts who used Windows programs on Earth could have brought a virus onto the ISS via a USB stick.

Mr Kaspersky did not provide details on how badly the virus affected ISS operations or how the problem was dealt with by the engineering crew.

According to a report on ExtremeTech, in 2008 a Windows XP laptop was brought onto the ISS by a Russian astronaut infected with the W32.Gammima.AG worm.

This rapidly spread to other laptops on the spacecraft which were running Windows XP.

Mr Kaspersky said this highlights the threat of cyber attacks even when a system isn't connected to the internet.

Systems that are not connected the internet are normally considered secure as a hacker would require physical contact with the computer.

Mr Kaspersky noted another example of the infamous Stuxnet virus which attacked a nuclear power plant in Russia– also disconnected from the internet - and badly damaged their internal infrastructure.

The ’Stuxnet’ worm, discovered in June 2010, brought home the reality of the danger posed by cyber crime.

Named the world’s ’first cyber super weapon’, Stuxnet was thought to be designed for attacking equipment associated with Iran’s Bushehr power plant.

Mr Kaspersky warned of the repercussions for releasing viruses such as Stuxnet.

‘What goes around comes around,’ he said. ‘Everything you do will boomerang.’

Source:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2503352/Russian-cosmonaut-accidentally-infected-International-Space-Station-USB-stick.html