Flight simulator site Avsim has been "destroyed" by malicious¹ hackers⁴.

飞行模拟网站Avsim被恶意电脑黑客“毁掉”。

Avsim was one of the largest sites serving the flight sim community

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

The attack took down the site's two servers and the owners had not established an external（外部的） backup system.

The site's founder⁵, Tom Allensworth, said that the site would be down for the foreseeable future（可预见的未来） and was unsure if would ever go back up.

"The method of the hack² makes recovery difficult, if not impossible, to recover from," Mr Allensworth said in a statement.

"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. "

Backlash

The attack has shocked the flight sim community, with hundreds of blogs, posts and tweets（鸣叫）. One user on the simflight.com website said that "there's a special place in hell for hackers who pull stunts⁶（特技） like this".

Speaking to the BBC, Derek Davis, editor of PC Pilot magazine, said: "It looks like 13 years of hard work on Toms part could have been wiped out.

"Avsim is an important site, because it services the whole community as a source of community developed terrains⁷（地带，地域）, skins, and mods - its contribution has been immeasurable," he said.

Mr Allensworth has set up a temporary forum⁸ for Avsim users while the future of the site is decided⁹.

On it, he explained the site's backing up process, although he did not explain why the firm had no external media storage.

"Some have asked whether or not we had back ups. Yes, we dutifully（忠实地，忠贞地） backed up our servers every day. Unfortunately, we backed up the servers between our two servers.

"The hacker³ took out both servers, destroying our ability to use one or the other back up to remedy（治疗，补救） the situation."

Mr Davis said he thought the site still had a future:

"I'm sure Avsim will rise like a phoenix¹⁰（凤凰，长生鸟） from the ashes and will be bigger and better then before."