Ah, Microsoft, but let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach. And you can’t reach a whole lot higher than the International Space Station (ISS), which NASA this week revealed had a few extra astronauts on board last month – a Windows Virus known as Gammima.AG.
This virus, which affects Windows 2000, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP machines, was first detected on Earth in August last year before heading off on its unexpected journey into space. Gammima AG is widely used to steal log-in data for online games in the Far East, the BBC reports. And the virus was carried to the station on laptops infected by the virus.
Gets better: "Nasa said it was not the first time computer viruses had travelled into space and it was investigating how the machines were infected."
Probably because the machines on the Space Station are running an insecure operating system, known as Windows, we reckon.
Space news website SpaceRef broke the story about the virus on the laptops that astronauts took to the ISS.
Oh – and it’s possible that some of us Earth-dwellers could have been infected by a computer virus sent from space: "The laptops infected with the virus were used to run nutritional programs and let the astronauts periodically send e-mail back to Earth," says the BBC. And the laptops used by astronauts don’t have anti-virus software installed.
Image illustrates an iPod on a space shuttle, by the way…
Do you think Nasa should switch to Mac?
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