NASA got hacked

The logo of NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (NASA)

On Wednesday Bob Gibbs, Assistant Administrator, Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer at NASA, sent out an agency-wide communication to employees announcing NASA servers had been compromised back in October.

As SpaceRef reports, the NASA server compromise happened on Oct. 23 and the servers targeted contained personally identifiable information (PII) for both current and former NASA employees. The personal data included Social Security numbers and "other PII data."

Although NASA's cybersecurity team quickly contained the breach, it remains unclear exactly how much data was accessed. There is no time frame given for when this will be known, just that "NASA and its Federal cybersecurity partners" are examining the breach and will at some point in the future be able to conclude just how many people are affected.

For now, all we know is the personal data on the servers is for employees of the NASA Civil service, those separate from the agency, and for anyone transferring between Centers for the period lasting July 2006 to October 2018. Any individuals who are found to be affected by the breach will be offered identity protection services to help counteract any use of their data by a third-party.

Gibbs also confirmed that no agency missions were jeopardized by this server breach, this is purely an employee data problem. However, it's worrying that an agency capable of transporting humans into space and allowing them to live outside Earth's atmosphere for extended periods of time, can't secure its own servers down on the ground.

This article originally appeared on PCMag.com.