But NASA Denies That The Hack Occurred

Security company founder Chris Roberts, who is being investigated by the FBI for his claim that he hacked into an airliner's flight control system through the onboard Wi-Fi and was able to steer the plane from his seat, at one time claimed he had hacked into the controls of the International Space Station and adjusted the temperature on board the station.

The U.K. newspaper The Telegraph reports that Roberts said a conference in 2012 that he had "gotten in trouble for playing with the space station." In a video recorded at the conference, Roberts reportedly said that several years previously, "we messed around with the space station and adjusted the temperature. It was quite fun. We got yelled at by NASA."

"If they're going to leave it open ... that's not encrypted that's their own damn silly fault," he said on the video.

But NASA official Dan Huot told The Christian Science Monitor that the event had never taken place. Huot described Roberts' claim as "laughable."

"It never happened. We have a lot of controls in place to prevent it," Huot said, adding that none of the space station's controls are connected to the internet."

Roberts also said that his team had tried to gain access to the Curiosity Rover on Mars, but was unable to do so.

News of the video was reported by the website Ars Technica. The site's security editor Dan Goodin told The Telegraph that it is clear Roberts is motivated by a true desire to improve security. "So far, no one has seriously argued he intended to inflict damage," Goodin said.

(Image from file)

FMI  http://arstechnica.com/