At least two laptops on-board the International Space Station more than 200 miles above Earth have been infected with a virus.
NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff, Expedition 17 flight engineer, works with an experiment in the Kibo laboratory of the International Space Station.
(Credit: NASA)
The worm, believed to be W32.Gammima.AG, steals personal information used to play online games from infected computers and then attempts to send the information back to a remote computer, according to SpaceRef.com, which broke the news on Monday.
The virus was not the first to hit a space station last month, just the first one that was reported, NASA spokesperson Kelly Humphries told Wired News. He described it as a "nuisance" that infected computers that are mostly used for applications like email and not critical systems.
Officials were trying to figure out how the virus got on-board. The space station has no direct internet access — astronauts send and receive mail through a KU band data link, according to Humphries. Reports speculated it may have spread via a USB memory device.
The International Space Station is a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the space agencies of Japan, Russia, and Canada.
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