Avsim.com gehackt

[EBKH]

Na een week van problemen met de server, is het hackers gisteren gelukt de website Avsim.com te kraken. Zowel de site zelf als de library zijn aangevallen, en de manier waarop is erg moeilijk te herstellen.
Het is nog maar de vraag of er überhaupt bestanden gered kunnen worden. In het slechtste geval zouden alle geüploade bestanden verloren gaan, wat een ramp zou zijn voor de wereldwijde FlightSimCommunity.
Veel meer is er nog niet bekend, maar we houden jullie op de hoogte.


Onderstaand bericht overgenomen van de Aerosoft website:

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.

[admin]

Hoe weet je zeker dat ze gehacked zijn?

Ik ga ervan uit dat ze wel een back-up hebben..

[Sander2]

Avsim deed heel raar. Dan kan je wel in libary zoeken en daarna niet.

[EBKH]

Hoe weet je zeker dat ze gehacked zijn?

Ik ga ervan uit dat ze wel een back-up hebben..

Onderstaand bericht overgenomen van de Aerosoft website:

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.

[EBKH]

I want to provide everyone with a non-technical view of what took place yesterday and last night so that some of the rumors that are already starting to spread are corrected.

During the early evening yesterday, we noticed that some alarming things were starting to happen on our servers. The first sign of an issue was that some functionality disappeared on our web server. That progressed to not being able to access the web server via FTP or SSH. Finally, the web/forum server tripped offline. Next the library/email server started to exhibit issues. We went in to reboot it, and that is when it failed entirely. The partitions on both of the servers had been removed. We shut down both servers until we can get a technical member up to our Network Operations Center (NOC), and do a comprehensive inspection of the damage.

I have seen some rumors and speculation already on the various forums in the community, and I would like to make sure that everyone knows the facts. Here are some:

Early in the evening, I sent out a bulk email to all forum members letting them know that we anticipate shutting down the Web/Forum server for a period of time. About a third of the way through the process of sending that email to all 60,000 forum members, the hacker succeeded in bringing the server down. The email was did not get sent to everyone. The reason I sent the email, based on what we knew at that time, was because that a minimum, we would need to shut the web/forum server down to inspect the unit and do repairs. At the time the email was sent, we were unaware that a hack was in progress and that our system would be taken offline entirely. There were no hoaxes involved, as some have asserted.

More in next post...

_________________
Tom Allensworth
AVSIM Online

Iets meer informatie over eventuele back-ups

Eerste bericht

All we know at this point is that we have lost the partitions. We DO NOT know if the disks were re-formatted. If they were formatted, then we are pretty much in a "start all over" mode. If not, we can re-establish the partitions and bring the system back online after some very detailed forensics. We know that whoever did this, did it to hide their tracks.

Tweede bericht

About offsite backups... our nearest tech member lives 2 hours away from the NOC. It was and has been impracticle to maintain a timely offsite backup. We were about to bring back online a third server (WHITE) to give us a third back up path. In fact, we were working on that very thing when our system was struck. White remains running, empty and unplugged from the net.

Momenteel is er een soort noodforum opgestart. Deze vind je via deze link.

[Airflyer]

Maar ze hebben toch wel een backup?

Edit: nogmeer info: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBVkcCrqDa0

[Mag007]

****More****

I have to tell you, it goes against my grain to solicit or allow donations without providing anything in return for your hard earned dollar/euro/yen or whatever. However, in the situation we are in now, any and all donations can help, if not immediately, then in the longer term. We will use your donations to help pay for any hardware that we need to purchase and any fees that we have to pay for technical assistance (that doesn't get volunteered that is). We will always be in need of future hardware upgrades, software, etc., so if your donation is not put to use in the short term, I can assure you that it will in the longer term.

Tom Allensworth

Donaten dan maar!

[EBKH]

Dat geld hebben ze zo bij elkaar

[Luc de Wit]

Hoeveel moeten ze hebben dan?

[Mag007]

However, in the situation we are in now, any and all donations can help, if not immediately, then in the longer term.

Gewoon zo veel mogelijk...

[Luc de Wit]

Dan kan je dus ook neit vaststellen of ze het geld zo bij elkaar hebben, als niet duidelijk is om hoeveel het gaat..

Zijn er nog mensen hier die doneren dan?

[Wouter14]

Nee, doen andere wel voor me

[Sander2]

Nee, doen andere wel voor me

Haha

[EBKH]

Heb geen pay-pal. Geen zin ook om er eentje aan te maken eigelijk

[EBKH]

Het nieuws van de Avsim hack heeft ondertussen zelfs de BBC berijkt
klik

Er gaan inmiddels geruchten dat de site van PMDG gister avond ook in aangevallen, maar zonder veel schade.
De site is terug online, vanwege een goede back-up. Of dit klopt weet ik niet, heb het bericht nergens kunnen verifiëren.

Met Avsim is het redelijk gedaan, zo lijkt het.
Het complete back-up systeem was zo lek als een mandje, en de online back-ups zijn dan ook allemaal verloren gegaan. Dit heeft van alle kanten tot veel kritiek geleid richting de beheerders van de site. Onze Engelse colega's schrijven zelfs dat het slechts een kwestie van tijd was voordat het zover zou komen, en dat ze blij mogen zijn dat het nog zo lang heeft geduurd. De leiding van de site wil niet verder ingaan op deze verwijten.
De site had dus (deels) gered kunnen worden, mits er voldoende aandacht besteed was aan het back-up programma.