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Comment by project2501a | Hacker News Reader

> "The attacker exfiltrated approximately 500 megabytes of data from 23 files, 2 of which contained International Traffic in Arms Regulations information related to the Mars Science Laboratory mission," the NASA OIG said.

wait, what? ITAR REGULATION for Mars Missions??

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To mangle an old saying: A sufficiently advanced space program is indistinguishable from an intercontinental ballistic missile program.

And to quote a different famous author: "A reaction drive's efficiency as a weapon is in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive."

This is also why it is silly to even consider defense against a hostile alien threat that arrives in our solar system. If they have a spacecraft capable of crossing interstellar distances then wiping out all life on Earth without warning is a trivial problem.

Don't get me started on the aliens in Harry Turtledove's WorldWar alt history. Being completely genre-naïve, they cross interstellar space and then proceed to fight WWII-era earthlings with approx F22-level technology and not unsurprisingly get bogged down in a stupid attritional war. Why didn't they just drop rocks on us from orbit?

Ah, the good ol' Kzinti Lesson [0].

[0] http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic....

Its a bit old, but amazing for some history of the modern system around Space.

The New Ocean by William R. Burrows.

Talks about the intentional setup for NASA TO be a 'civilian agency' and not military.

I work in aerospace. You'd be surprised at the triviality of what data gets covered under ITAR and security classifications.

Trivial by itself. Combined with other information, the trivial can paint a very clear picture.

I've seen the value of g (yes, Earth's gravitational field, the average one) labeled as ITAR restricted. There's plenty of truly trivial stuff that gets labeled that way.

Sometimes, sure. Not always.

MSL uses a RTG which means it has nuclear material onboard which means it falls under ITAR.

That said, I don't see where this is especially valuable to hackers at this point. There are much easier ways to steal nuclear material these days than to target the one on Mars.

Believe it or not, there is more to ITAR than annoying programmers with crypto export rules. All manner of cutting edge shit has obvious military applications and is covered by ITAR. ITAR may cover materials, radios, navigation systems, and much more. Any of those might plausibly be in a space probe. Various technologies relating to satellites in particular are covered.

Farming equipment and practices.

Oh crap

Someone is about to build an entirely COMPLIANT space mission :/

Brace yourselves

Are those regulations for everyone's eyes? If I were an enemy, it would be interesting to learn that "Do not give specifications of equipment XYZ to the $ENEMY.". Then I'd know the existance of equipment XYZ, and I can probably tell my agents on the ground to snoop around for it/try to source it from the supplier/hack their network to get its specs.

ITAR obviously isn't focused on export to "enemies". If I export sensitive missile technology from America to New Zealand, an ally of America, that will still run afoul of ITAR and for good reason. Consider the scenario where New Zealand has lackluster counter-intelligence and $ENEMY is able to freely infiltrate New Zealand companies. In exporting missile technology to New Zealand, I have put that missile technology in a position where it can be more easily stolen by $ENEMY, even though I never exported a thing to $ENEMY. Could those same $ENEMY agents infiltrate an American company instead? Maybe/probably, but the US Government would prefers that attack surface be kept smaller than larger, and under American jurisdiction when possible.

from the training sessions they made me take ages ago, most everything about space-flight hardware and control systems is ITAR-restricted.

Not anymore. Now it's almost everything is EAR, and ITAR is restricted to a smaller subset nowadays. EAR is still painful but much less than ITAR - if you just want to use an EAR product and you are in a NATO country, handling the restriction is fairly smooth.

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