According to a Pastebin post, the Cyber Warriors Team claimed that it had hacked an SSL certificate on the NASA site and gained access to researchers’ personal data.
“We succeeded To write (programming) a https Protocol Scanner under DOS Service (Sent the sources used). One of the reasons The Problem, Problem was in installing the SSL Service. We were exploring and use Of You Holes in https Protocol”, the group wrote in broken English.
The group said that it was able to obtain user emails and accounts for thousands of NASA researchers. NASA declined to comment on the group's assertions.
Commenting on the group’s claim, Anne Saita wrote in a Threatpost blog that the Cyber Warriors Team is apparently an independent group of Iranian student hackers and programmers “who promised to post video of the NASA attack at a later date.”
Saita said the group claimed that it created an HTTPS protocol scanner to locate the vulnerability in the NASA web site, later identified as NASA's Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System site.