Closed Potential Malware on the Orbiter 2016 Download Page

[BenSisko]

I'm returning to the Orbiter community after a few years off. Yesterday I went to Martin's site to download the 160628 core package and high resolution textures. Clicking on the download mirror triggered this fake error message

Redirecting

Fortunately, I have a 3 year old copy of the core package on an old laptop and will search for the high-res packages in my old machine. For now, I'm reluctant to go back to Martin's download page. The fact that all the Orbiter Forum 160628 downloads link to that page is problematic as long as this malware issue persists.

 

[DaveS]

If you are talking about UC London webpage, then there's nothing no-one here can do about it: https://www.orbiter-forum.com/threads/orbiter-is-now-open-source.40023/post-584788

 

[BenSisko]

If this is a real threat we need to at least warn the community. Also, if the Forum's download page links to those mirrors there needs to be a secure way for folks to download the necessary packages.

 

[Col Brubaker]

I had several issues the last days with downloads and I got also directed to non Orbiter pages. Downloads disappeared, or did not start running. On the other hand I am on Linux.

Col Brubaker: Do we have a hidden Mars.torrent for to download? Because the Mars is gone. How about reconfigure some links? Saturday at 12:56 PM

Can I download the Earth or not?

 

[Max-Q]

Here is the correct link.
Everything works, I just downloaded all the textures a few days ago.
http://orbit.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/index.html

 

[Urwumpe]

If this is a real threat we need to at least warn the community. Also, if the Forum's download page links to those mirrors there needs to be a secure way for folks to download the necessary packages.

Before crying "wolf", can you at least name the mirrors and downloads that are reported? It can also be a false positive.

 

[gattispilot]

I tried the Download mirror2 USA and got this:

 

[Urwumpe]

The European Mirror from Orbiter-radio is still fine, just did some scans with different scanners

I also get a weird redirect from US mirror 2. The domain seems to be expired. Same for US Mirror 3, mirror 4 is still fine

 

[BenSisko]

It was mirror 2 that I used yesterday. Thanks to you all for getting on top of it!

 

[BenSisko]

Before crying "wolf", can you at least name the mirrors and downloads that are reported? It can also be a false positive.

I don’t believe I was crying wolf.

 

[Xyon]

For reference, the orbiter-forum.com and orbithangar.com are the only sites we support officially in this section. The europe Orbiter download mirror is my server (mirror 1), so I do accept support requests for that here, and the only other site of relevance I think would make sense to mention here is altea aerospace, which is operated and owned by @dbeachy1 and serves as mirror 4.

Neither I nor the other forum staff can do much of anything about the other sites; only Martin has or had access to the UCL site, which links to the mirrors in the first place, and the other mirrors that aren't mine or @dbeachy1 's are similarly not sites we have any control over or can offer any support for. From cursory checking today it looks like mirrors 2 and 3 no longer function and indeed lead elsewhere - it might be prudent for us to make some kind of general community announcement that this is the case, but beyond that the only person who can alter where those links point to is @martins.

 

[Arvil]

Since @martins has uploaded all versions of Orbiter he had and the high-res textures to here in resources, are the mirror sites even needed anymore?

 

[Xyon]

Since @martins has uploaded all versions of Orbiter he had and the high-res textures to here in resources, are the mirror sites even needed anymore?

What's hosted here is just the core Orbiter, the mirrors house the high-resolution tile and terrain data files Orbiter 2016 needs, which is not stored here (far too big). You can get the P2P torrent files from here to download those items, however. The mirrors are a primary distribution method; between mine and @dbeachy1 's mirror we do at least have most of the Western hemisphere well-served for generally proximate traffic; users in Asia will, however, probably be at a disadvantage while pulling those resources, so for them the torrents might be a better option.

tldr; no but yes