The Not-So-Nice Side Of The Internet Shows Itself

Like many wonderful things, there is an alternate side to the internet... a side that is destructive, mean, vicious and often -- criminal. From the attack blogs to the flamers to rumor-mongers and cyber-terrorists, it's hard to equate why something as powerful as the net has such a ugly underbelly.

ANN regrets to note that AVSIM, a truly professional website dedicated to flight-simmers and the community that enjoys aviation simulation, was hacked this week by person(s) as yet unknown and that the damage was so great that the site, for now, is down and unlikely to return any time soon.

Tom Allensworth, CEO and Publisher of AVSIM, has issued some limited details of what occurred, "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."

No one, as yet, knows who did what though at least party, with a 'bad blood' relationship with the site, is currently suspected as having engineered the take-down and a number of parties are pushing for an aggressive criminal investigation -- and are likely to get it.

A temporary forum for AVSIM devotees is currently online at http://linux.myalbemarle.org/forums/index.php .

Allensworth has posted an update promising that AVSIM will come back and is grateful for what appeas to have been an amazing show of support from the online community.

ANN wishes AVSIM well... and offers whatever assistance we might provide to them as they rebuild their community... Good luck, folks.

FMI: www.avsim.com