Stuxnet hits the International Space Station
according to Eugene Kaspersky article in The Guardian, Stuxnet, the computer virus that targeted Iran’s nuclear programme facilities, has now “badly affected” a Russian nuclear plant and spread to the International Space Station when a Russian astonaut took an infected USB stick into space.
ar also reported by Times of Israel, Kaspersky said at Australia’s National Press Club, “what goes around comes around … there are no borders in cyber space,” He also affirmed that Stuxnet is now in the “wild” and even the virus’ perpetrators – widely thought to be Israel and the US – could be susceptible infection.
Last year then US secretary of defense Leon Panetta warned that we’re in the digital equivalent of a “pre-9/11 moment.” Just like in 2001 the warning signs are there and similarly, while the US has passable defences to repel a cyber attack, it could be left exposed if improvements aren’t forthcoming and procedures continue to go unchecked. Through cyberspace “an aggressor nation or extremist group could gain control of critical switches and derail passenger trains, or trains loaded with lethal chemicals,” he said. “They could contaminate the water supply in major cities, or shut down the power grid across large parts of the country.”
The revelation that the International Space Station has succumbed to Stuxnet is another prescient warning of the borderless, ubiquitous nature of cyber threats.
The Guardian
