AVSIM DESTROYED

[Tom Goodrick]

Avsim has been hacked and essentially destroyed.

See the note in NEWS on the BGA Forum.

[Tom Goodrick]

I am afraid this may mark the end of large web sites. I hope the FBI is investigating and that their findings will become known to those in the computer security business. That may help. But one thing that has been clear to me watching the computer security business for almost 30 years (since I started writing machine code and designing executives) is that there is always a new worm or virus that will get around the latest level of protection.

Think back to when you were a kid. In any neighborhood in the world, there were many good kids but a few bad kids - bullies - that spent their time trying to make life miserable for the good kids. Today many of those bullies are hackers. The computer has given them power over other "good kids" who want to do nice things with computers - things that are appreciated by many elements of the public.

In my brief stinit in the Navy Reserve, I came face to face, as a Training Instructor, with a guy who could not be happy unless he was causing pain and consternation to others. He hated everyone and every institution. He was serving in my Basic platoon at the order of a judge instead of going to jail. I had no fun teaching him close-order drill. He threatened my life and I know he meant it. But I was in top shape and demonstrated to him and the other "boots" the fact I could and would take him out if he tried to attack me. The point is there are evil people in the world. No other term expresses it as well.

So it seems to me this should be a wakeup call to the people who fund development of large commercial web sites that they are extremely vulnerable to malicious hacking. "www" stands for the World Wide Web and that is where the bad guys can come from - any place in the world so their anger.

One can ask who would be so angry at a web site that simply supplies FS news and free files to enhance the hobby. But that is irrelevant. The bad guys do not need a reason to attack.

[hanspetter]

Here's the link to a preliminary Avsim board:

linux.myalbemarle.org/forums/index.php

The latest news is that they want to rebuild the site. While nobody can prove what has happened this hack / crack seems to have been an inside job. A person with full administrator priviledges has been suspected. In any event, there should have been a complete backup offline. Maybe not a totally up-to-date copy of everything but at least a monthly backup. With an offline backup the hackers could destroy everything over and over without being able to wipe out the emergency backup. Yes, we're talking terrabytes of disk space but that isn't a major cost or hassle compared to losing it all.

The library can be rebuilt to include all current files. Any active freeware developer will have a copy of each of his own creations and will certainly upload them again. Older files may be lost forever. FS files tend to be uploaded to Avsim as well as Flightsim.com so we're likely to find most of those files on the latter server. Let's hope Flightsim.com is better at securing their website.

[hanspetter]

Avsim is essentially back