Even the Ingenuity Mars helicopter could be vulnerable to log4j

Even the Ingenuity Mars helicopter could be vulnerable to log4j

The panic surrounding Log4Shell, the now-infamous log4j vulnerability, spread to Mars, where the strange behavior of NASA's Ingenuity helicopter raised concerns.

The Ingenuity helicopter reached the surface of Mars together with the Perseverance rover in February 2021 and lifted off for the 5th time on December XNUMX. However, while descending, an "unexpected loss of in-flight data stream" occurred. , which meant that the NASA team did not know exactly what the state of the ship was, the organization explained.

As the incident coincided with the disclosure of the log4j vulnerability, some people started to make the connection. The theory stemmed from an article posted on Twitter in June by the Apache Software Foundation, which claims that the helicopter mission is "powered by Apache log4j."

NASA has yet to comment on claims that log4j may have something to do with the problem.

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In the same blog post, NASA later explains that a follow-up investigation determined the flight was a success.

“Perseverance serves as the helicopter's base station for communication with controllers on Earth. A handful of radio data packets the rover received later suggested a healthy helicopter on the surface, but did not provide enough information for the team to declare a successful flight," the space agency wrote.

"But data transmitted to mission engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Friday, December 10, indicates that Flight 17 was a success and that Ingenuity is in excellent condition."

Log4j is a Java logger that was recently discovered to contain a critical flaw, allowing malicious actors (even those with very few skills) to execute arbitrary code on millions of endpoints and remove malware, ransomware, and cryptominers.

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