Large Holes Found in NASA’s Network Security
There are numerous holes in NASA'a internal computer network security, making it extremely vulnerable to external cyber-attacks, reported an audit by NASA's Office of the Inspector General. What makes the situation worse is the fact that these weaknesses in the network security have been known for months and yet remained unrepaired.
The audit report released by Inspector General, Paul K, stated that six computer servers related to controlling spacecrafts and containing critical data were found to have vulnerabilities in their network security, allowing a potential attacker to take control or even render them unavailable.
"The attacker could exploit this weak network security and us these compromised computers to degrade or cripple NASA's operations," revealed the report. "We also found network servers that revealed encryption keys, passwords and user account information to potential hackers," it added.
This is hardly shocking though, as NASA's networks are now long known to be weak and their security vulnerable. What is shocking, however, is that nothing is done yet to remedy the situation.