Can cyber criminals annoy NASA?

            NASA sounds very strong as an organization and an institute of prime importance to United States and its sovereignty among all nations of the world. It has been informed that NASA computer has been stolen that contains codes for International Space Station. I wonder what a person can do with a computer of NASA since you have to go through many tough passwords and most of time all the data is encrypted. To me, this would be a useless effort for a person who stole it. But if the data in the computer is not encrypted then???

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had repeated concerns regarding NASA’s ability to stop cyber attacks in his speech earlier in last week. 

“We are literally getting hundreds or thousands of attacks every day that try to exploit information in various [U.S.] agencies or departments,” said Mr. Panetta.

Another loss of laptop stolen in March, 2011 from NASA will result in loss of algorithms used to command and control ISS as noted by Paul Martin, Inspector General NASA.

Not only that another lost laptop that contained sensitive data on the NASA’s Constellation, Social Security numbers and Orion programs is also not encrypted and is at risk as indicated by Mr. Martin, U.S. space agency’s inspector general reported to U.S. House Committee.

It seems like these cases would increase as number of mobile devices is increasing day by day and now it’s easier that important information might gets into wrong hands as hinted by NASA official while warning the committee.

“Until NASA fully implements an agency-wide data encryption solution, sensitive data on its mobile computing and portable data storage devices will remain at high risk for loss or theft,” Mr. Martin told the Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.

Statistics showed that some 50 devices were either lost or stolen from 2011 till 2012 however it is not known that what exactly was in the data stored in computers. Only this is made known that unauthorized leakage of sensitive data may be problematic for U.S. It may be personal information, or other information of high importance. Mr. Martin clarified the statistics by saying that space agency use voluntary reporting system and that the statistics are far from the accurate. Having said that he said that space agency cannot precisely measure the data that has been lost by stolen or misplaced devices.

“NASA cannot consistently measure the amount of sensitive data exposed when employee notebooks are lost or stolen because the agency relies on employees to self-report regarding the lost data rather than determining what was stored on the devices by reviewing backup files,” he said.

The speech made by NASA’s official can been seen as a warning for NASA that the certain systems are vulnerable to be attacked by hackers and that NASA has increased its focus on all these concerns and is ready to combat the risk of cyber attacks.

The NASA officials said that they are aware of this problem and are taking steps to overcome such hazards. However, it is not known that what steps are they taking and to what extent.