7 ms·

Linux To Become Exclusive OS Of The International Space Station

321 points by moo 13y ago

shmerl 13y ago
Great news.
vy8vWJlco 13y ago
"Back in 2008, a Russian cosmonaut managed to take a laptop to the ISS that spread the W32.Gammima.AG worm to all the other laptops aboard the station." Holy crap.
- winter_blue 13y ago
  Why is it always the Russians or Chinese? Why isn't there a American or Western European scientist/cosmonaut committing similar mistakes/blunders?
  - lkozma 13y ago
    Because you are reading American/Western European news.
  - thejosh 13y ago
    That you hear of anyway.
  - slacka 13y ago
    I don't know about Russian, but when I lived in China, I discovered that the Chinese expect PCs to have malware. From my tailor to our factories, every machine I used was infected. Opening a new web page on someone else’s PC always started a game of wack-a-mole to close all the popups. Even the pirated XP CDs they'd sell everywhere came with malware pre-installed.
  - a1a 13y ago
    Before assuming they are the ones "always committing mistakes/blunders" please provide source or at least some examples. You are making use of the logical fallacy "Complex Question Fallacy" - http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-question/ http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-questio... - and I do not approve.
    - rbanffy 13y ago
      I don't think winter_blue meant what you think he/she meant. The question is why we hear these stories more often than american-made blunders. Which I am not even very sure we do.
  - ghshephard 13y ago
    Different cultures, different attitudes towards these things. I was recently in Aschaffenburg (Germany) doing interoperability tests with some of our networking equipment and a large SCADA vendor. About two hours into the tests, we ran into some problems, which we quickly identified as being related to the firewall on one of the test laptops in their lab having a very restrictive firewall rule (wouldn't allow ping). We had to wait for the better part of two hours while they got approval to adjust the firewall rules to allow ping from another device in the same lab. Note that this was a lab laptop, and these were technically sophisticated people - they understood the implication of allowing ping - it's just that their policy/procedures with regards to security were very, very strict. I can guarantee you, in any interop tests I've done in Silicon Valley - there would be zero friction (even with the utility companies, enterprise software vendors, scada vendors) around opening up icmp on a lab laptop firewall. I cite this as an example where Americans (at least those in Norcal) are more lax regarding security than another culture (in this case, whatever was prevalent in the part of Germany Aschaffenburg is located in)
    - kmasters 13y ago
      You can guarantee that? I dont think so, Im not a sysop but if I was, you would need to explain why ICMP needs to be open. Whether Im in Norcal or not. Most sane organizations are going to turn off ping, its not a cultural thing and it doesnt seem like you faced any friction since you got it opened in 2 hours. Ive been working here in norcal my whole life and I dont see a culture of lax security in shops that have actual security requirements. Its not the country is the quality of the network administration team.
      - ghshephard 13y ago
        I've been a network engineer for 15+ years, and I'm saying that 95% of all employees I deal with in the Bay Area would not think twice about opening up a firewall rule and allowing you to ping a lab machine, particularly when the purpose of your engagement was to verify end-end network connectivity. They would make the call, themselves, on the spot. The reason I bring this up, is that I've been told by a number of my colleagues that german culture, in particular, has a tendency to be more rule structured than in the United States, so, if there was a security policy in place, it had a greater chance of being adhered to in Germany, than in the Norcal. And the entire point of my little anecdote was to make it clear, that there is broad diversity of attitudes towards rules, policy - and that the "United States" doesn't have a lock on following rules/policy.
  - dimitar 13y ago
    Because people from poorer countries like these use their employers computers to download movies, games and music from p2p networks. The Westerners have more disposable income so they a) use their own computers for entertainment and b) buy stuff from amazon and itunes instead of searching for warez. So its about income and culture. Company cars are also viewed as a perk and its not unusual to take a company car for a picnic. Employers are usually fine with this - it improves morale and is less costly than actually paying more.
    - malloc2x 13y ago
      An interesting idea. s|movies, games, music|games/software| and it might be more plausible. (.mkv, .mp3 or even the .rmvb that's weirdly popular in China are hardly common attack vectors.) However, if we're talking about China, and the demographic of employees that get sent for international matters, then we're definitely not talking about people that can't afford their own computers. I would posit this holds for nearly any country (except North Korea?) Taking your argument as just "a culture of grabbing untrustworthy software from anywhere is the reason", it becomes more persuasive to me.
  - fakeer 13y ago
    You read the book just like the publisher published and finally press guy printed it.
- Maarten88 13y ago
  It is probably a wise move for them to move to Linux, having many other systems running Linux too. But Windows security is a poor argument imo. If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 (which was working quite well by then), or had better managed those laptops, that incident would not have happened. Now, five years later, they still have not upgraded to a modern Windows version. After so many years, anything is going to be more secure than XP. Nowadays, you have to patch and update to have a secure system. Freezing the software to guarantee stability makes it inherently unsecure, Windows or Linux. There is no difference other than the larger base of existing virusses for Windows. Also I wonder what this means for power usage, which is not unimportant in space. Windows still gets longer use out of most laptop batteries than Linux.
  - exDM69 13y ago
    > If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 .... Keeping your Windows up-to-date might require updating (some of) your hardware too. And hardware updates are expensive if they have to be delivered to low earth orbit.
    - johnminter 13y ago
      Yes. We have lab PCs here still running Windows NT because the upgrades for the hardware are either unavailable or would be prohibitively expensive (> $20K) and still not implement all the functionality. We tend to hide these from our well-protected corporate network behing a boat-anchor PC running XP with all the service packs and antivirus. We will run these systems until they can no longer be repaired because management does not want to spend the money to replace them.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    > If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 For that, they'd probably have to certify that all their software and flight-certified hardware functions correctly with Vista. They'd have to start certifying them for Longhorn in 2003.
    - Someone 13y ago
bdz 13y ago
Which distro?
- a1a 13y ago
  Debian 6 Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/iss_linux_debian_deployment/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/iss_linux_debian_dep...
  - brokenparser 13y ago
    It's not "The universal operating system" for nothing.
    - amitdugar 13y ago
      completely n00b question : how does Debian compare with Ubuntu ?
      - a1a 13y ago
        >> It's not "The universal operating system" for nothing. +1 >> completely n00b question : how does Debian compare with Ubuntu ? http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/ubuntu-and-debian http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/ubuntu-and-debian
      - digitalzombie 13y ago
        I'm not claiming to be an expert but: Ubuntu is built on top of Debian with some different parts and added stuff. Ubuntu is more bleeding edge than Debian (unless you use Debian Sid). Ubuntu is supposely more user friendly and gear toward desktop. Debian is supposely gear toward server but I've used Debian as a desktop before and server. I mean all the magical stuff Ubuntu have you can install on to Debian.
  - alberich 13y ago
    Now that is what i would call a "success story". How many distros can claim to be used in the space? :) I'm glad to see Debian being recognized for it's rock solid stability.
belorn 13y ago
A good and suitable use of Linux based systems. They can now install custom installations with packages that are individually vetted. They also got source code, so there is no limit on how careful reviews and (continuously) testing that can be made. During crunch time, they can even crowdsource. The malware threat will also be lower, mostly thanks to not installing every single default program and service that windows come pre-install. So long they are not completely lazy and just install a massive DVD sized distro like Ubuntu, the attack surface and number of packages needed to vet should be quite manageable.
mh- 13y ago
(slightly) more detailed article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-space-station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-spac... in related news, Debian 6 apparently ships with support for the International Space Station, but still can't manage to sleep/resume peacefully.
- claudius 13y ago
  It slept/resumed quite wonderfully here, and it continues to do so after the upgrade to Wheezy/Debian 7. Did you break something?
  - brokenparser 13y ago
    More likely a bug in the ACPI support of the specific motherboard model.
QuantumGuy 13y ago
How is it not already the exclusive OS?
- aclevernickname 13y ago
  it seems the debian guys are going to just drag us kicking and screaming to that destintion.
  - QuantumGuy 13y ago
    What do you mean?
    - aclevernickname 13y ago
      Ah. you meant the exclusive OS for the space station. I was thinking far more broadly. :)
ColinWright 13y ago
Finally! This story has been submitted so many times over the past few weeks, it's nice to see it finally get some traction. Other sources may have different levels of detail, or different takes on the story, so in case anyone is interested in reading the story from other sources, here are some of the other submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668312 (zd.net) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669927 (zdnet.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5677045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5677045 (linuxfoundation.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680490 (extremetech.com) (4 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5686586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5686586 (gizmodo.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5687720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5687720 (readwrite.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689142 (venturebeat.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5695447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5695447 (telegraph.co.uk) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5711378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5711378 (vice.com) Interestingly, very few comments or upvotes on any of them.
fixxer 13y ago
Is anyone else horrified that they were running Windows?
- DanBC 13y ago
  On personal laptops? On machines that just do dietary stuff? No, it's okay. It's a bit scary that this isn't the first time malware has got into space nor onto the Space Station. Considering how intrusive the procedures must be for astronauts I'm gently surprised that intensive malware scanning isn't a requirement for anything that goes into space.
  - vy8vWJlco 13y ago
    When I read that bit it dawned on me just how plausible all those worst-case alien-movie scenarios might just turn out to be... Oh sure, it starts innocently enough: someone shows up for work feeling slightly "under the weather," one thing leads to another and next thing you know you're transporting off-world egg-sacks back in your chest cavity.
  - bad_user 13y ago
    "Malware scanning" is a pretty dumb process. All it does is to check for certain known signatures. Scanning for malware doesn't fix the problem.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      Yes, I agree that malware scanning is dumb. But in this case it would have prevented malware from being taken into space.
NotUncivil 13y ago
If they still favor ThinkPads on the ISS they can expect a pleasant Linux experience.
X4 13y ago
Finally it becomes the respect it deserves. I hope the project will receive more respect and openness by those damn hardware manufacturers. Keeping hardware artificially closed, needs an end.
tantalor 13y ago
Laptops? On laps? Weightlessly?
sytelus 13y ago
wow... So $150 billion ISS was using Windows XP until now?!!!

321 points by moo 13y ago

Great news.

"Back in 2008, a Russian cosmonaut managed to take a laptop to the ISS that spread the W32.Gammima.AG worm to all the other laptops aboard the station." Holy crap.

winter_blue 13y ago
Why is it always the Russians or Chinese? Why isn't there a American or Western European scientist/cosmonaut committing similar mistakes/blunders?
- lkozma 13y ago
  Because you are reading American/Western European news.
- thejosh 13y ago
  That you hear of anyway.
- slacka 13y ago
  I don't know about Russian, but when I lived in China, I discovered that the Chinese expect PCs to have malware. From my tailor to our factories, every machine I used was infected. Opening a new web page on someone else’s PC always started a game of wack-a-mole to close all the popups. Even the pirated XP CDs they'd sell everywhere came with malware pre-installed.
- a1a 13y ago
  Before assuming they are the ones "always committing mistakes/blunders" please provide source or at least some examples. You are making use of the logical fallacy "Complex Question Fallacy" - http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-question/ http://www.logicalfallacies.info/presumption/complex-questio... - and I do not approve.
  - rbanffy 13y ago
    I don't think winter_blue meant what you think he/she meant. The question is why we hear these stories more often than american-made blunders. Which I am not even very sure we do.
- ghshephard 13y ago
  Different cultures, different attitudes towards these things. I was recently in Aschaffenburg (Germany) doing interoperability tests with some of our networking equipment and a large SCADA vendor. About two hours into the tests, we ran into some problems, which we quickly identified as being related to the firewall on one of the test laptops in their lab having a very restrictive firewall rule (wouldn't allow ping). We had to wait for the better part of two hours while they got approval to adjust the firewall rules to allow ping from another device in the same lab. Note that this was a lab laptop, and these were technically sophisticated people - they understood the implication of allowing ping - it's just that their policy/procedures with regards to security were very, very strict. I can guarantee you, in any interop tests I've done in Silicon Valley - there would be zero friction (even with the utility companies, enterprise software vendors, scada vendors) around opening up icmp on a lab laptop firewall. I cite this as an example where Americans (at least those in Norcal) are more lax regarding security than another culture (in this case, whatever was prevalent in the part of Germany Aschaffenburg is located in)
  - kmasters 13y ago
    You can guarantee that? I dont think so, Im not a sysop but if I was, you would need to explain why ICMP needs to be open. Whether Im in Norcal or not. Most sane organizations are going to turn off ping, its not a cultural thing and it doesnt seem like you faced any friction since you got it opened in 2 hours. Ive been working here in norcal my whole life and I dont see a culture of lax security in shops that have actual security requirements. Its not the country is the quality of the network administration team.
    - ghshephard 13y ago
      I've been a network engineer for 15+ years, and I'm saying that 95% of all employees I deal with in the Bay Area would not think twice about opening up a firewall rule and allowing you to ping a lab machine, particularly when the purpose of your engagement was to verify end-end network connectivity. They would make the call, themselves, on the spot. The reason I bring this up, is that I've been told by a number of my colleagues that german culture, in particular, has a tendency to be more rule structured than in the United States, so, if there was a security policy in place, it had a greater chance of being adhered to in Germany, than in the Norcal. And the entire point of my little anecdote was to make it clear, that there is broad diversity of attitudes towards rules, policy - and that the "United States" doesn't have a lock on following rules/policy.
- dimitar 13y ago
  Because people from poorer countries like these use their employers computers to download movies, games and music from p2p networks. The Westerners have more disposable income so they a) use their own computers for entertainment and b) buy stuff from amazon and itunes instead of searching for warez. So its about income and culture. Company cars are also viewed as a perk and its not unusual to take a company car for a picnic. Employers are usually fine with this - it improves morale and is less costly than actually paying more.
  - malloc2x 13y ago
    An interesting idea. s|movies, games, music|games/software| and it might be more plausible. (.mkv, .mp3 or even the .rmvb that's weirdly popular in China are hardly common attack vectors.) However, if we're talking about China, and the demographic of employees that get sent for international matters, then we're definitely not talking about people that can't afford their own computers. I would posit this holds for nearly any country (except North Korea?) Taking your argument as just "a culture of grabbing untrustworthy software from anywhere is the reason", it becomes more persuasive to me.
- fakeer 13y ago
  You read the book just like the publisher published and finally press guy printed it.
Maarten88 13y ago
It is probably a wise move for them to move to Linux, having many other systems running Linux too. But Windows security is a poor argument imo. If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 (which was working quite well by then), or had better managed those laptops, that incident would not have happened. Now, five years later, they still have not upgraded to a modern Windows version. After so many years, anything is going to be more secure than XP. Nowadays, you have to patch and update to have a secure system. Freezing the software to guarantee stability makes it inherently unsecure, Windows or Linux. There is no difference other than the larger base of existing virusses for Windows. Also I wonder what this means for power usage, which is not unimportant in space. Windows still gets longer use out of most laptop batteries than Linux.
- exDM69 13y ago
  > If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 .... Keeping your Windows up-to-date might require updating (some of) your hardware too. And hardware updates are expensive if they have to be delivered to low earth orbit.
  - johnminter 13y ago
    Yes. We have lab PCs here still running Windows NT because the upgrades for the hardware are either unavailable or would be prohibitively expensive (> $20K) and still not implement all the functionality. We tend to hide these from our well-protected corporate network behing a boat-anchor PC running XP with all the service packs and antivirus. We will run these systems until they can no longer be repaired because management does not want to spend the money to replace them.
- rbanffy 13y ago
  > If they had upgraded to Vista in 2008 For that, they'd probably have to certify that all their software and flight-certified hardware functions correctly with Vista. They'd have to start certifying them for Longhorn in 2003.
  - Someone 13y ago

bdz 13y ago

Which distro?

a1a 13y ago
Debian 6 Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/iss_linux_debian_deployment/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/10/iss_linux_debian_dep...
- brokenparser 13y ago
  It's not "The universal operating system" for nothing.
  - amitdugar 13y ago
    completely n00b question : how does Debian compare with Ubuntu ?
    - a1a 13y ago
      >> It's not "The universal operating system" for nothing. +1 >> completely n00b question : how does Debian compare with Ubuntu ? http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/ubuntu-and-debian http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/ubuntu-and-debian
    - digitalzombie 13y ago
      I'm not claiming to be an expert but: Ubuntu is built on top of Debian with some different parts and added stuff. Ubuntu is more bleeding edge than Debian (unless you use Debian Sid). Ubuntu is supposely more user friendly and gear toward desktop. Debian is supposely gear toward server but I've used Debian as a desktop before and server. I mean all the magical stuff Ubuntu have you can install on to Debian.
- alberich 13y ago
  Now that is what i would call a "success story". How many distros can claim to be used in the space? :) I'm glad to see Debian being recognized for it's rock solid stability.

belorn 13y ago

A good and suitable use of Linux based systems. They can now install custom installations with packages that are individually vetted. They also got source code, so there is no limit on how careful reviews and (continuously) testing that can be made. During crunch time, they can even crowdsource. The malware threat will also be lower, mostly thanks to not installing every single default program and service that windows come pre-install. So long they are not completely lazy and just install a massive DVD sized distro like Ubuntu, the attack surface and number of packages needed to vet should be quite manageable.

mh- 13y ago

(slightly) more detailed article: http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-space-station-switches-from-windows-to-linux-for-improved-reliability http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/155392-international-spac... in related news, Debian 6 apparently ships with support for the International Space Station, but still can't manage to sleep/resume peacefully.

claudius 13y ago
It slept/resumed quite wonderfully here, and it continues to do so after the upgrade to Wheezy/Debian 7. Did you break something?
- brokenparser 13y ago
  More likely a bug in the ACPI support of the specific motherboard model.

QuantumGuy 13y ago

How is it not already the exclusive OS?

aclevernickname 13y ago
it seems the debian guys are going to just drag us kicking and screaming to that destintion.
- QuantumGuy 13y ago
  What do you mean?
  - aclevernickname 13y ago
    Ah. you meant the exclusive OS for the space station. I was thinking far more broadly. :)

ColinWright 13y ago

Finally! This story has been submitted so many times over the past few weeks, it's nice to see it finally get some traction. Other sources may have different levels of detail, or different takes on the story, so in case anyone is interested in reading the story from other sources, here are some of the other submissions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668312 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5668312 (zd.net) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5669927 (zdnet.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5677045 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5677045 (linuxfoundation.org) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5680490 (extremetech.com) (4 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5686586 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5686586 (gizmodo.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5687720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5687720 (readwrite.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5689142 (venturebeat.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5695447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5695447 (telegraph.co.uk) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5711378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5711378 (vice.com) Interestingly, very few comments or upvotes on any of them.

fixxer 13y ago

Is anyone else horrified that they were running Windows?

DanBC 13y ago
On personal laptops? On machines that just do dietary stuff? No, it's okay. It's a bit scary that this isn't the first time malware has got into space nor onto the Space Station. Considering how intrusive the procedures must be for astronauts I'm gently surprised that intensive malware scanning isn't a requirement for anything that goes into space.
- vy8vWJlco 13y ago
  When I read that bit it dawned on me just how plausible all those worst-case alien-movie scenarios might just turn out to be... Oh sure, it starts innocently enough: someone shows up for work feeling slightly "under the weather," one thing leads to another and next thing you know you're transporting off-world egg-sacks back in your chest cavity.
- bad_user 13y ago
  "Malware scanning" is a pretty dumb process. All it does is to check for certain known signatures. Scanning for malware doesn't fix the problem.
  - DanBC 13y ago
    Yes, I agree that malware scanning is dumb. But in this case it would have prevented malware from being taken into space.

NotUncivil 13y ago

If they still favor ThinkPads on the ISS they can expect a pleasant Linux experience.

X4 13y ago

Finally it becomes the respect it deserves. I hope the project will receive more respect and openness by those damn hardware manufacturers. Keeping hardware artificially closed, needs an end.

tantalor 13y ago

Laptops? On laps? Weightlessly?

sytelus 13y ago

wow... So $150 billion ISS was using Windows XP until now?!!!