Avsim hacked!

[PascalL]

Press release from the staff:

PRESS RELEASE: AVSIM Hacked!!

Tom Allensworth, CEO and Publisher of AVSIM, today issued the following announcement; “We regret to inform the flight simulation community that on Tuesday, May 12, AVSIM was hacked and effectively destroyed. The method of the hack makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from. Both servers, that is the library / email and web site / forum servers were attacked. AVSIM is totally offline at this time and we expect to be so for some time to come. We are not able to predict when we will be back online, if we can come back at all. We will post more news as we are able to in the coming days and weeks. END

Best Regards,
Tom Allensworth

I'ts very sad news indeed, and we are concerned, since some Orbiter add-on authors posted they work over there! (BrianJ?)

more information on the temporary forum:
http://linux.myalbemarle.org/forums/index.php

Pascal

 

[insane_alien]

don't they have backups?

 

[PascalL]

It seems the backups has been destroyed too.
Apparently they "cross-backed up" between both servers. Very bad idea!

 

[the.punk]

Oh no.
Just noticed that.
Wanted to download an aircraft for flightsimulator.

 

[n122vu]

Not Sad. Furious

:WTF: This angers me beyond words. Why would they hack AVSIM? What do they gain by taking it down? It's a neutral site that hosts files and forums. Why would anyone want to do this??

 

[ar81]

Some people feel they are "talented" when they destroy.
If only they learned that the real challenge is to create.
Destroying is easy. Creating is not.

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

Read this - the FBI might get involved!

http://linux.myalbemarle.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=98

 

[Randy_Cain]

Hi,

I hope someone is noticing that this means all the file links in the addon library no longer work. I just downloaded and reinstalled Orbiter for the first time since about 2005-6. ...v.03xxxx. I'm looking forward to getting back into this.

I do hope those files aren't lost..or that users here may have those older files that they can send once the library is up and running again.

Pete, Yeah, I don't think this purb realized what demographic he was "attacking".

Yours,

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

SUPPORT AVSIM IN YOUR SIG WITH THE OFFICIAL BANNER!

http://linux.myalbemarle.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=49

 

[ar81]

Probably hackers like the game of hide and seek, an emotional drive.
If they liked real challenges, they would be creating and they would be praised and admired for their creations, instead of being hunted for destroying.
It is easier to delete, than to create useful software from scratch.

 

[howitzer]

It's irresponsible to only blame the hacker. Something as important as this should have also had an offline backup. The way Tom had it set up would have only protected him from hardware failures.

Tragic non the less. I hope they nail the s.o.b. who did this.

 

[Woo482]

wow there kind of stupid not to have a backup off site from were the servers are.

 

[Pilot7893]

H4x0rz really piss me off. They're upset about something that happened on the site (most likely them being stupid) and take it out on everyone else there.

 

[simonpro]

Jesus, how stupid can you be? Even I know you should always take an external backup. Anything else is just asking for trouble.

 

[caningo]

Guys, check out the BBC article:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8049780.stm

 

[ar81]

Users UNITE!!! Let's rebuild the site!!!
Let's help them to recover.
There must be a way to provide them the addons we just downloaded.

 

[Orbinaut Pete]

Off-topic, but is Orbit Hanger (and O-F) protected against things like this???

 

[Urwumpe]

Off-topic, but is Orbit Hanger (and O-F) protected against things like this???

I am damn sure, O-H is protected against the usual forms of such criminality.

Against real hackers, I doubt Vash will have a perfect defense, but on the other hand, such people don't care about destroying the site or demanding ransom. They are usually not even interested into something as boring as O-H.

The perfect defense against hacking is pulling the plug, everything else will always mean chances for skilled people to cause trouble. As there is little financial gain behind attacking O-H, you can be sure even the rather unskilled criminal networks will not be active.

And against the typical vandalism, it should be well prepared - it even survived a Hurricane.

 

[ar81]

And against the typical vandalism, it should be well prepared - it even survived a Hurricane.

I did not know hackers caused Katrinna... :lol::rofl:
----------------------------------------------------------
It looks to me like Avsim did not have any kind of professional advise on how to prevent incidents and how to implement good practices.

Here some free advise by Interpol:

Company checklist

IT security and crime prevention methods

 

[Moonwalker]

This incident shows that AVSIM was not trustable at all if we talk about proper backups. I'm glad that this happens at a time while I'm going to completely change over to X-Plane (I'll get an extra hard drive for it next month). Since 2001 AVSIM was my basic source for free sounds and liveries for MSFS (as MSFS was the basic focus of AVSIM). But since the MSFS era is going to end (slowly, but it will shrink in future), X-Plane will be my future, including payware stuff and for sure different sources than AVSIM (basically payware anyway).

I don't address hackers. There are and always will be criminal and mentally ill minds out there. I definately address the operator of AVSIM. They are fully responsible for the outcome of the attack. They are fully responsible that they did not backup the work of all those who developed addons for more than 10 years. Hopefully many developers will have their own backups and offer them AVSIM again.

Obviously the hacker/hackers did know about the missing backups...