Stuxnet Did Not Infect The International Space Station (ISS)

Much news has broken about Stuxnet, a virus which was credited for sabotaging the Iranian uranium enrichment program, has found its way to the International Space Station, or the ISS for short. It was said that Stuxnet had gone rogue, especially when it has the ability to infect other machines via USB or optical media instead of the usual modus operandi of an Internet connection. Just in case you think that an apocalyptic scenario is about to unfold, fret not – the ISS has not been infected by Stuxnet, and all of the earlier reports have been blown out of proportion due to sensationalism.

Apparently, Kaspersky had never mentioned that Stuxnet had infected the International Space Station, but he did present a couple of separate and unrelated anecdotes. The first of the two was about non-specific malware being carried onboard the space station by astronauts, while the other had something to do with Stuxnet infecting a Russian nuclear-facility network. Kaspersky was cited to have said, “The space guys, from time to time, are coming with USBs, which are infected. I’m not kidding. I was talking to Russian space guys and they said, ‘Yeah, from time to time, there are [computer] viruses on the space station.'”

NASA was also quoted as saying, “Virus was never a threat to any of the computers used for cmd and cntl [command and control] and no adverse effect on ISS Ops [operations].” There you go, right from the horse’s mouth itself, the ISS is safe from any virus infection so you won’t find any rogue satellites causing havoc worldwide.

Edwin Kee
Categories: Computers
Tags: virus