Hi and welcome to malicious life in collaboration with Cyberism.

I'm Ran Levy. In 1989, the Wankworm devastated NASA's Johnson Space Center in the days surrounding a shuttle launch.

I remarked in our episodes covering that story how remarkable it was that two teenagers could

have conceivably disrupted the world's most technically sophisticated

apparatus from their bedrooms in Australia.

But should I have been all that surprised?

NASA hacking stories are not so rare as we might like to think.

I now recognize our next witness, Mr. Martin, for five minutes.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman Brown, Ranking Member Tonko.

On February 29, 2012, Paul Martin, NASA Inspector General, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives

Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight.

The subject of the hearing was a statement he authored about the state of

NASA cybersecurity. If you want to check out a video of Martin's opening statement, you can find it on

YouTube.

As of the date of this recording, it's got just over 35 views,

most of which can probably be attributed to our podcast team.

But I'm not just poking fun here,

although maybe I am a little.

The fact is that while Paul Martin's testimony made some news in the cyber security community back in 2012,

the level of attention it received was hardly fitting with the content of its

message, because what he said was really quite remarkable.

In 2010 and 2011, NASA reported 5408 computer security incidents that resulted in the installation of

...