The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA),one of the world largest agency responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace, has been hacked.
According to a Memo that was part of a communication sent on Tuesday. December 18th, to NASA employees from Assistant Administrator at the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer Bob Gibbs indicated Nasa suffered a huge data breach on their server. According to the information obtained. the unknown hackers may have obtained sensitive information about employees who were or are employed with NASA from July 2006 to Oct. 2018.
Among other targets, the hackers allegedly stole confidential data, which include but are not limited to the names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, salary information, phone numbers and email addresses of more than 17,000 personnel.
In the current era where most companies/agencies that depend on technology for almost all their operations have continued to endure cyber security threats in their data base systems. successful attacks by hackers, during most times, have unauthorized third parties used improperly obtained users information to gain access to certain company websites, potentially resulting in unauthorized access to personal information of their users or subscribers.
Despite the breach, whose actual time frame according to the memo is suspected to have occurred between October 22nd and 23rd, Nasa remains confident that breach didn’t appear to have impacted any of the agency’s missions. The agency adds that its working with federal cyber security investigators to determine the extent of the data breach and who might be the responsible.