The US government's normally lame efforts to secure its computer networks from malicious script kiddies fell to new lows earlier this week as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) secretly blocked access to several of its Web sites from more than 1.5 million cable subscribers belonging to ISP Excite@Home.

For nearly three days this week, subscribers to Excite's broadband Net services were unable to visit the Web site for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), among others. The lab's Web site has been a frequent, easy target for malicious crackers, as we noted in a previous story.

NASA declined to comment on why it had to resort to blocking all traffic from a major ISP to prevent further humiliation at the hands of malicious children. Excite@Home representatives could not be reached by press time. ®