NASA hack exposed employee data | Latest in a series of data breaches at space agency
Nasa has sent an email to all its staff warning them that their personal data may have been stolen.
The message said the agency suspected that two of its servers containing details of past and present employees had been compromised. It added that it did not believe any Nasa mission had been put in jeopardy. One expert noted the NASA hack was the latest in a series of breaches made public by NASA since 2011. In this particular case, the memo involved was published by the SpaceRef news site. It said that a probe into the incidents had been ongoing since 23 October. The memo states:
Our entire leadership team takes the protection of personal information very seriously. Nasa is continuing its efforts to secure all servers, and is reviewing its processes and procedures to ensure that the latest security practices are being followed throughout the agency.
The email added that the NASA hack exposed employee data including social security numbers and other undisclosed personal details belonging to employees who had worked for it since July 2006. During a previous attack in 2011 hackers took control of computers in Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Another NASA hack occured in 2013 led to eight Nasa web domains being defaced by a gang calling itself the Master Italian Hackers Team. Sam Curry, chief security officer at Cybereason said:
The public want to know that this government agency is learning from the past, we want the post-mortem. There are many things at Nasa in the national security domain which are of vital importance.
Sources and credits: BBC NewsMore stories involving data theft
