Ollie Davies

Flight Sim Website Tracks Hacker

Posted on 10. Sep, 2009 by Ollie Davies in Aviation

The Outfit that ran a flight simulator website shut down by a cracker in May says it has presented a file of evidence to Inspector Knacker of the Yard which it claims contains “incontrovertible evidence” about the hacker’s identity.

Avsim, a US firm, lost data held on two servers and the attack “effectively destroyed” the site, which is still being rebuilt.

According to the firm it expects that the criminal complaint it filed with London police will lead to the alleged hacker spending “time behind bars”.

Of course if this was in the US, the hacker would be locked up for many decades in a ‘get tough policy’, which obviously has deterred so many crackers that website hacking is non-existant there.

Tom Allensworth told the Beeb that he would not name names, because in Blighty if you do you could stuff up a trial. However he said he had forensic evidence and provided that evidence to the London police.

The evidence was submitted on Monday to the Southwark division of the Metropolitan Police, which was “acting on behalf of another constabulary”.

The US site, launched in 1996, covered all aspects of flight simulation, although its main focus was on Microsoft’s Flight Simulator.

Avsim has spent $50,000 to bring its website back online since the 12 May attack, with $25,000 of that having been contributed by users.

It is fairly clear that the outfit has spoken to the hacker as it said it had given him or her “two opportunities to settle” which were ignored.

Allensworth said that Avsim is ratcheting this matter up to the next, criminal, level.

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