Is It Possible to Hack Into a Spacesuit?

NASA declined to answer, but security experts weigh in

Wes O'Donnell
OneZero
Published in
5 min readOct 4, 2019

--

Photo: NASA/JPL

AAlong with nuclear missile silos and the U.S. stock market, few other targets provide such a tantalizing challenge for U.S. foes as hacking our space endeavors.

In fact, in June of this year, NASA published an audit document from the U.S. Office of the Inspector General revealing that the space agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) had been hacked in 2018. Hackers accessed an unauthorized Raspberry Pi computer connected to the JPL servers that they used to probe deeper into NASA’s network.

Officials from the Johnson Space Center (JSC) were worried that the attackers could move laterally from the gateway into the communications systems, potentially disrupting the signals used on human space flight missions.

As of March of this year, the JSC had not restored the use of all its communications data because of continuing concerns about its reliability.

Hacking a NASA astronaut’s spacesuit in flight

To be sure, the audit makes clear that NASA has some terrestrial security concerns to deal with. But what about hacking human spaceflight systems in orbit?

--

--

Wes O'Donnell
OneZero

US Army & US Air Force Veteran | Global Security Writer | Intel Forecaster | Law Student | TEDx Speaker | Pro Democracy | Pro Human | Hates Authoritarians