The Gammima Strain

Photo: NASA

Is the International Space Station just another bot in a botnet? Are criminal hackers tapping away in some dark warehouse now in control of critical command-and-control systems on board? No, that would make a good Michael Crichton novel, though. It seems some laptops carried on board by U.S. astronauts were infected with the Gammima.AG virus, the BBC reports. It's a password-stealing virus, intended to transmit login names and passwords back to a central server. No virus detection was installed on the network and NASA doesn't know how it got on the laptop. A memory stick is suspected. In any case, no command or control systems were compromised. SpaceRef's "report" also notes:

Working with Russians (and other partners) regarding ground procedures to protect flown equipment in the future.