NASA Hacked ! Hackers Tried to Crash $222 Million Drone into the Pacific Ocean
276 GB of data, including employee IDs/personal information, flight logs, and video feeds, was allegedly intercepted from NASA's internal network.
Responsibility for the interception and data leak was claimed by hackers from the AnonSec group, who published the personal information of 2,400 NASA employees (names, phone numbers, email addresses), 2,000+ flight log files, as well as 631 videos recorded by aircraft and weather radars on the internet.
AnonSec hacked NASA servers for about two years
The hackers have reportedly had access to NASA servers since at least 2013, access they gained when a strain of the Gozi virus that they themselves had distributed online accidentally infected one of the organization's servers.
Taking advantage of this initial access, the hackers then managed to gain access to the server's root account through brute force attacks (due to an extremely simple admin password being used), further penetrating the NA SA computer systems.
The team managed to not only maintain access to the compromised server, but over time, expanded its access inside the network, gaining access to three NAS (Network Attached Storage) devices, where classified data and information about NASA's drone missions were kept, as well as backup copies of flight plans.
Later, hackers also broke into the networks of the Glenn Research Center, the Goddard Space Flight Center, and the Dryden Flight Research Center.
Hackers tried to crash a NASA drone worth $222 million.
While analyzing network traffic, the hackers found that NASA engineers often used a pre-determined flight plan for most of the drone missions.
So, using simple MITM (Man-in-the-middle) attack techniques, the hackers stole one of the predefined flight plans and replaced it with one of their own, which called for the crash of a Global Hawk drone in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
AnonSec's plans were thwarted by one of the NA SA engineers, who detected a change in the drone's original flight plan and took manual control of the drone in time, saving it from crashing
Soon after this incident, NASA became aware of the breach and AnonSec permanently lost access to the compromised servers.
