The study of cyberwar is more important now than it has ever been. Over the last 20 years we have witnessed cyberwar evolve from an obtuse but prescient concept to a theoretical possibility to a world of constant cyber attacks to today, where all war has cyber components. All war today is cyber war, and all conflict is cyber conflict.Have you been numbed by constant reports of breaches? They get old for sure, especially since so many have at their core common issues that could have been avoided by application of best practices.
Now here is an interesting/new story: A NASA astronaut is accused of hacking her estranged spouse’s bank account from space
I have zero first-hand knowledge of this but have read the reports.
My assessment: The account in question was accessed from space. But not in a way that I would consider hacking. Looks like credentials were shared. That is a bad habit and may be in violation of the bank’s rules. But there certainly does not seem to be evidence of any sort of crime (if your spouse gives you their login and password and you use that is it a crime? What about when you are having difficulties? Does that make it different?).
If you did give a spouse access to an account and want to end that, revoke the access! Change the password. Better yet, do what the cybersecurity community has been advising for the last decade: use multi-factor authentication.
There are other key points this makes, however. For one, NASA needs to think through its cybersecurity policies and controls for on orbit and deep space missions.
We have been writing on this topic for quite a while. Most recently we produced a special report for OODA members on the Cyber Threat to NASA’s Project Artemis.
Because of this incident we will be updating that one for sure. It clearly needs to include a more implicit articulation of the insider threat and ways to mitigate that while platforms are in space.
This report, done for OODALoop members, is described this way:
NASA is enabling another giant leap for humanity. With the Artemis program, humans will return to the Moon in a way that will enable establishment of gateways to further exploration of not just the Moon but eventually the entire solar system. The initial expenses of the program will return significant advances for scientific understanding and tangible economic returns. As Artemis continues, the project will eventually deliver improvements for humanity that as of yet have only been dreamed of. But there are huge threats. For more see: The Cyber Threat To Artemis
If you have not signed up for OODALoop yet get in touch and I’ll give you a discount code to check this report out.
This is the CTOvision guide to the megatrend of Cybersecurity. This post provides a high level overview of key factors in cybersecurity that we recommend any technology professional should be familiar with, as well as insights that can help assess the near future of cybersecurity solutions. The report also captures insights from recent reporting done on the topic as well as information on cybersecurity vendors we track in the 