Laptops at the International Space Station have been infiltrated by a virus, which basically steals passwords from online games. The problem is not very serious as the virus is not very high risk. Space station’s control and command computers are safe. There is also no risk of infiltration of the virus in the orbiting laboratory according to NASA officials.
SPACE.com in accordance with a NASA planning document has identified this worm as the W32 GAMMIMA AG. Anti virus software manufacturer Symentac from California described this low risk virus as one, which attacks the removable media by copying itself onto it and steals online games passwords.
Kelly Humphries, a NASA spokesperson said this worm is nothing but a nuisance. There have been rare occurrences of viruses on board earlier and that they will do their best to identify and close the gateway through which they come in.
Search has been initiated to find out how this virus could have reached the Space Station located about 200 miles above the Earth according to Humphries. Humphries also reiterated that more details on the virus and the method employed to deal with it cannot be revealed due to security reasons.
Virus screening has also been carried out on new flash memory cards to be launched to the station next month on a Cargo ship from Russia according to the NASA document. Document also stated that Windows was not the operating system of all 71 laptops on board. Laptops, which do run on Windows, are being updated.
At the moment there are three astronauts at the space station, the Russian cosmonaut commander Sergei Volkov, flight engineer Greg Chamitoff from NASA and Oleg Kononenko the flight engineer.