The International Meteor Organization, the nonprofit that coordinates and publishes amateur and professional observations of meteor phenomena, said its infrastructure had suffered a “severe blow” from a cyberattack.
“We recently suffered a cyberattack that dealt a severe blow to aging infrastructure and took much of our website offline,” a static page on the company’s website said Wednesday. “We anticipate several weeks of partial downtime as we transition to new infrastructure and services.”
“I am very sad that the site is no longer available”
Meanwhile, the IMO said it is prioritizing reporting fireball observations, which can be reported here. The organization also provides some information on its Facebook page.
The IMO has helped develop uniform standards for reporting meteor observations. Its databases of reported meteor and fireball observations – consisting of text, photos and videos – are also considered indispensable by many experts. The IMO also publishes the WGN Journal, which stands for Working Group News in English, every two months. The organization was officially founded in 1988.
It’s unclear why an organization that tracks large, fiery space objects hurtling toward Earth would become the target of a damaging cyberattack. It’s equally unclear why anyone would want to steal his data (assuming that was the motive), most of which is public.
