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1988 was Morris Worm and 1989 was Worms Against Nuclear Killers. 35 years ago, a worm called was leaked into NASA's network. This event is considered to be the first known politically motivated computer attack, later called hacktivism. NASA was preparing to launch the Galileo spacecraft with a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. This inspired the hackers. The attack began on October 16. According to the author of the book Underground: Hacking, Madness and Obsession on the Electronic Frontier, scientists came to work and found on their screens not the materials they needed, but the message of the hackers: "You talk about peace for everyone, and then you prepare for war". Five years ago, NASA slides were published, prepared a month after the incident.
The attack was carried out in two stages: the first infected 90 computers, and two weeks later, an updated version of the worm infected another 500 devices. NASA experts considered the cause of the incident to be non-compliance with the agency's password policy. The presentation indicates that France could have been the source of the attack. But later suspicion fell on the Australian hacker community, there is even an unconfirmed, but intriguing version that a young Julian Assange was involved in the NASA hack.
The presentation says that the FBI and NASA Inspector General are investigating, and the agency will pay more attention to improving password practices. But at the very end, there is a phrase that is still relevant: "Open international networks will always be vulnerable to a certain extent".
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