MILAN \u2014 The European Space Agency has confirmed a security breach of unclassified material from\u00a0 science servers following reports on social media.<\/p>\n
A threat actor claimed to have compromised ESA systems and to have leaked roughly 200 gigabytes of data. According to screenshots shared on X<\/a> by French cybersecurity professional Seb Latom, the actor alleges they were able to steal source code, API tokens, access tokens for multiple ESA systems, confidential documents, system and application configuration files and hardcoded credentials such as embedded passwords and authentication secrets.<\/p>\n The screenshots Latom posted<\/a> suggest the compromised material may include subsystem requirements related to the Ariel mission \u2014 short for Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey \u2014 a science mission designed to study the atmospheric chemistry of exoplanets, as well as Airbus spacecraft material dated 2015 and marked \u201cconfidential.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n However, ESA said<\/a> its initial forensic analysis, which remains ongoing, has identified only \u201ca very limited number of science servers \u2014 located outside the ESA corporate network \u2014 that may be affected.\u201d According to the agency, these servers are used for unclassified collaborative engineering activities within the scientific community.<\/p>\n In December 2024, ESA\u2019s online shop \u2014 then operated by an external service provider \u2014 was exploited by hackers to process malicious payments. As with this case, the affected platform was hosted outside ESA\u2019s internal network.<\/p>\n ESA added that relevant stakeholders have been notified and that short-term remediation measures have been implemented to secure any potentially affected systems.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tEmma Gatti is a planetary scientist, editor and journalist, and serves as a research professor in Space Journalism and Current Affairs at the Faculty of Space Technology, AGH University of Krakow. She is also the director of The Space Republic, a media…\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Emma Gatti\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MILAN \u2014 The European Space Agency has confirmed a security breach of unclassified material from\u00a0 science servers following…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":381154,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[64,63,130706,284,11046,2057,128,7410,285],"class_list":{"0":"post-381153","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cyberattack","11":"tag-cybersecurity","12":"tag-esa","13":"tag-europe","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-sn","16":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381153"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381153\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/381154"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}