This time hackers targeted United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
NASA today confirmed a data breach that may have compromised some personal information of some of its current and Ex-employees after at least one of the agency’s servers was hacked.
NASA said the unknown hackers gain the access to one of its servers storing the personally identifiable information (PII). This includes social security numbers, of current and former employees.
After discovering the intrusion, NASA has since secured its servers and informed that the agency is working with its federal cybersecurity partners “to examine the servers to determine the scope of the potential data exfiltration and identify potentially affected individuals.” However, NASA said this process “will take time.”
It should be noted that no space missions were jeopardized by the cyber incident, the agency said. NASA currently employs roughly 17,300 people.
The agency said all the affected employees will be notified once identified the beach. At that time, the hackers even attempted to crash a $222 million drone into the Pacific Ocean by gaining control over the drone by rerouting the flight path.
The agency said that NASA discovered the breach on October 23. Its cybersecurity personnel began investigating the possible breach of two of its main servers that hold employee records.
“Our entire leadership team takes the protection of personal information very seriously. Information security remains a top priority for NASA,” said Bob Gibbs, assistant administrator at NASA’s Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer.
“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.”
This is not the first time when the agency’s servers have been compromised. NASA suffered a massive security breach in 2016. That time the hacking group released 276GB of highly sensitive data including flight logs and credentials of thousands of its employees.
