Somebody Wants Anonymous To Hack The Curiosity Mars Rover

The Curiosity Mars Rover landing is one of the most significant engineering and scientific events of the year. The guys at NASA are super proud and we are all lucky to see the beautiful photos it’s sending back. It seems like nothing could go wrong, right?

PC Magazine is reporting that a rogue element is requesting members of Anonymous to join in on his latest escapade – hacking the NASA control center that’s in charge of Curiosity. Suitably, the person is going by the name of “MarsCuriosity” and has been asking Anonymous members in Madrid, Spain or Cabarra for help.

So what exactly does he want to do? For now, he wants to “isolate the huge control signal used for the Mars Odyssey/Curiosity system.” He needs the “base frequency and recordings/feed for the huge signal going out.” He says that the signal being sent to Curiosity can be “spoofed both ways.” That could either mean that he wants to send NASA bogus video footage or send bogus instructions to Curiosity. Either way, it wouldn’t be good.

As PC Magazine points out, however, MarsCuriosity may not even be a member of Anonymous. He could just be somebody looking to make a name for himself and he wants to enlist members of Anonymous into the operation. They also point out that it’s unlikely such a hack would ever take place even if he were to get help from a few members within Anonymous.

It’s still a strange what-if kind of scenario. Hacking is commonplace now and it’s only a matter of time before something big happens. The media coverage that the Curiosity has received thus far makes it a perfect target for a hacker hoping to get famous. Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that though. I would like to think that members within Anonymous would have enough smarts to not mess with NASA or the advancement of science for something shallow like fame.

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