International Space Station breached by hackers

By Isabelle Chaize

Hackers have managed to penetrate computer systems, describe by Nasa as ‘ significant’, on board the International Space Station.

Nasa were alerted to the problem after the three astronauts onboard reported last night that their email was no longer functioning.

It is thought that a Trojan was planted in the computer systems at the Space Centre in Houston, from where they were transferred to the Space Station via satellite uplink.

The problem is made considerably worse by the fact that the computer systems on board are out of date. The Operating System used in Microsoft’s Windows 3.1.

Micorsoft have said that unfortunately they are powerless to help at the moment as they no longer support 3.1 with security fixes.

Professor Brian Offin, Microsoft’s head of obsolete operating systems, said ‘I am sorry but there is nothing we can do. It is past its deadline.

‘Windows 3.1 is a very old operating system and the technical support team has been entirely subsumed into the Vista troubleshooting team and trust me, they are needed there.’

However he said that they were trying everything they could to help the astronauts, even searching through the files of retired personnel to find people who had once worked on 3.1 and who might have some spare time to lend a hand.

Luckily there is no danger caused to the astronauts lives by the Trojan, but the escape capsule has been readied just in case - althought there are concerns that it too has been infected.