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A comment on Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet. Parent comment

Re:Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet by ChuckMcM on Friday October 07, 2011 @06:46PM (#3086314)
To refute your statement that the control systems of the ISS aren't windows, there was a story in wired [1] where it talked about Windows problems on the station's on board computers. They linked to the commander's log [2] which mentions the NT problems. Generally infrastructure issues with specific software and such is redacted from this log for national security reasons but this tidbit survived apparently. The speculation from wired was "The network appears to be a mix between IBM AIX (Unix) and Windows NT servers and Russian laptops running an unspecified operating system." which correlates with what folks I know at NASA have hinted at as well.

[1] http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2001/04/42912?...

[2] "At about 2200, we were reconfiguring some mail files which, with a lot of help from Windows NT, got put in the wrong place during the backup procedure. When we finished restoring the files, the network was down and would not come back up. We worked this for several hours. Finally, jiggling some cables brings just a part of the net back. (that really instills confidence in the stability of your network)." - from http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/station/crew/exp1/exp1shepmarfeb...

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Re:Computer virus hits US Predator and Reaper drone fleet by drzaiusapelord on Friday October 07, 2011 @11:08PM (#3086894)
I still disagree. 'Mail files' could be anything. Local mail clients on those laptops they carry on the ISS. It sounds like they have a local LAN which is not any type of control system. Most likely the ISS is run by some RTOS. Its typical in aircraft and ships and power plants to have a unsecure network for things like workstations and completely separate and often incompatible network for control systems. All the mail servers could crash and every laptop infected, but the ISS control systems would be fine.

Yes, we all know they use Windows on their workstations and it was assumed they had a file/mail server too. Why wouldn't they?

You can use differing definitions for "what the ISS runs" but a mail server is not a control server and its disingenuous to keep insisting it is. Its purposeful misdirection like this that leads Joe Sixpack into thinking the spaceships get viruses a la Independence Day and hacker kiddies can whistle a virus that'll send the ISS crashing into the Earth.

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