Avsim destroyed

[Maarten]

Hi guys,

Just read this shattering press release at the Sim-Outhouse Forum:

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.

see also www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/showpost.php?p=172539&postcount=1

I'm just stunned by this news.

Maarten

[cfields70]

Does that mean most of CC's downloads are gone as well?
AvSIM was my favorite DL site....
This seriously sucks!

Chris

[stansdds]

darn. I got the CV-240 paintkit right after they restored file service. AvSim is such a great source for flight sim stuff. Why do hackers even attack such sites?

[Deleted]

Just before the servers went down over at AVSIM I saw a message from Tom Allensworth that they were taking the servers down for maybe 24 hours for maintenance, and that it was a planned outage. It said to let folks know. Now I see this news of AVSIM being destroyed Shocked and I can hardly believe it. No offense to anyone at all, but is this 100% a legitimate report of the issue (i.e. was AVSIM actually destroyed, or is it just down)? Although, with a message from Tom stating "total destruction" over at AVSIM you'd think that would solve the issue, I guess my shocked mind is kinda wondering if the report of AVSIM being destroyed isn't somehow a hoax. Obviously the site is down, but seeing Tom's message just before the servers went down (unless that message was somehow a fake), makes me wonder...

Tim

[jazz5]

What's the sense of doing this? I just wonder what kind of sick mind achieves his ultimate pleasure to destroy work of others.
Sickening action!

cheers
Jazz

[Mike]

This is really bad news. I hope that the site can be resurrected as it's the best site out there. There are some truly sick people loose in the world, and I hope that the person who did this can be tracked down.

Mike

[Ricardo Miranda]

Hi,

This is one of the worst things that could happen to our community.

In the meanwhile, while they try to recover, they have a temporary forum here: linux.myalbemarle.org/forums/index.php

Soft Landings for all except the hacker that did this!

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi all,

A very sad day for flight sim indeed.

Yes, this means that all the links here at CC that linked to AVSIM will now be broken.

At some point I will be trying to get a listing of the files that are no longer available and start looking for alternate links, but this would take a long time and if AVSIM comes back up soon unnecessary (but I understand they have no backups, and this would be dependent on recovery of the information from the now dead disks).

A more critical thing for me to do is to find out what files were linked to AVSIM that I may not have a backup for here or are elsewhere on the web. I might need to appeal to you folks to send me files I no longer have here so we at least have them all. The Greg Pepper paint kits are my first worry - I don't know if I have those anymore or if they were anywhere else than AVSIM...

[ikkim1985]

Tom, I have found DC-6/DC-6B paintkit and CV-240 Paintkit in my hard drive.
If you need them let me know. I'll send it to you as soon as possible.

[Wolfgang]

Hi,

not to worry about the sceneries.
I have them all....I think
Same with the needed libraries.

All the sceneries I have uploaded are mirrored
to flightsim.com.
Harry Biards are also there.
I have taken a search for Mike Stevens sceneries and
there are some missing on flightsim.com,
same for Jason Krogmann and some from Tom Gibson.

Best Regards
Wolfgang

[okami]

My two sceneries were only available on AVSIM; I'll try to upload them to Flightsim.com asap. I'll use the occasion to correct a mistake in the Glasgow scenery download, and slightly upgrade the Bulltofta one.

[jesse]

Avsim has established a link that will allow folks to register and get any info and updates as they occur. Here is the excerpt from Flightsim.Com.

Update: A temporary forum has been set up to provide updates here. linux.myalbemarle.org/forums/index.php

You can log on to fs.com and click on the link at the end of the article on the loss of Avsim.

Jesse

[Tom/CalClassic]

Hi again,

Everything that uses an installer I should still have, except for the old FS2002 stuff. I've never bothered to get rid of those.

As for the paint kits, please see the new paint kit thread.

Thanks,

[johnhinson]

I wouldn't assume that all is lost - I found long ago that work which I only uploaded to AVSIM mysteriously appeared at:
flightsim.com
fs2000.org
simviation.com
and quite probably a lot of other places. So take a look around first.

As to AVSIM's problems, they sound more like disc failure than hacking to me, but whether or not this is the case the failure to keep backups is a deplorable failure, and if they really were hacked, the failure to implement software security updates or have the usual security measures in place is worrying.

These days hackers run a massive number of automated scripts to test sites for security holes and no server will escape trouble if it is not protected.

Best wishes,

John

[Wolfgang]

Hi,

you are right John !
I also don't believe the hacker story.
Sure, they got hacked, but this has not much
to do with the loss of all data.

Best Regards
Wolfgang