Mars rover ‘Curiosity’ under hacker attack?

A New York security firm claimed to have spotted a message on an Internet Relay Chat.

NASA’s Mars rover ‘Curiosity’ might be facing a hacking threat from the notorious hacker group,Anonymous,a US security firm has claimed.

The group,Anonymous had reportedly brought down websites including Visa and several US Government sites as a protest against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s arrest,and ‘Curiosity’ could be their next target,the Daily Mail reported.

A New York security firm claimed to have spotted a message on an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) asking for help to hack into the signals NASA uses to communicate with the Curiosity rover.

Flashpoint Partners spotted a message by user ‘MarsCuriosity’ in one of the Anonymous-related IRC channels that it monitors known as the AnonOps IRC channel.

“Anyone in Madrid,Spain or Canbarra who can help isolate the huge control signal used for the Mars Odyssey / Curiosity system please?” the message read.

“The cypher and hopping is a standard mode,just need base frequency and recordings/feed of the huge signal going out. (yes we can spoof it both directions!),” it added.

There is speculation by online discussion groups that the message could be a fake,or even an attempt by law enforcement agencies to trap hackers,the report said.

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‘Curiosity’ had made a spectacular landing in Gale Crater at 05:30 GMT (11:00 IST) on August 6 in a two-year search to find out if the red planet once hosted conditions suitable for life.