海角大神

Security researcher Chris Roberts is no stranger to controversy.

The founder of the cybersecurity firm One World Labs made headlines this week with the release of an affidavit from the FBI聽that alleged he boasted about hacking a plane聽mid-flight聽and forced it to briefly fly sideways.聽Mr. Roberts has denied that he ever made that claim.聽But it wouldn't have been the first bold assertion he has made about his hacking targets.聽One boast that he can't deny 鈥� 鈥� is that he breached the聽International Space Station.聽

A NASA spokesman on Wednesday told Passcode this claim was "laughable."

Ars Technica reporter Dan Goodin聽聽the video of Roberts giving a talk in 2012 where he discusses airplane security. During the question and answer period, Roberts said he hacked the space station and altered its temperature. 鈥淲e got yelled at by NASA,鈥� he says. 鈥淚f they're going to leave open [a system] that's not encrypted that's their own ... silly fault.鈥�

The talk was given at the 2012 GrrCON Information Security Summit & Hacker Conference, where Roberts is scheduled to speak again this year. The conference site says that his 鈥淸s]ubject matter [will] be determined by the number of federal agents present in the audience鈥�.

Yet NASA's Dan Huot said that Roberts never hacked the space station 鈥� and no one else has either.聽鈥淚t鈥檚 never happened,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e have a lot of controls in place to prevent it.鈥�

Mr. Huot says hacking the space station would be near impossible. Neither the on-board networks that control the station, nor the systems that control it from mission control centers in Houston and Moscow can be accessed off site. Those systems are not connected to the Internet, says Huot.聽He also says that penalties for hacking a space station would be stiffer than being "yelled at" by the agency.聽

The International Space Station, which was launched in 1998, has offered separate Internet access to astronauts since 2010.

Mr. Roberts did not respond to requests for comment.