A cyberattack disrupted the operations of the ALMA Observatory

Chile’s ALMA Observatory has temporarily shut down all its astronomical observation operations after a cyberattack against their systems occurred last week. Moreover, Atacama Large Millimeter Array Observatory’s public website suspended its operation due to cybercriminal disruption.

Currently, the email services of the Chilean entity are limited, and its IT team are trying to restore the affected systems. The organisation notified the public regarding the security incident through a Twitter post, saying that their team could not determine exact data for the return of their standard operations.

Fortunately, the ALMA Observatory assured everyone that the cyberattack did not affect their antennas or scientific information. The attack showed no signs of unwanted data breaches or exfiltration.

 

The ALMA observatory revealed that they could not discuss the attack with other institutions as they are currently investigating the situation.

 

According to reports, the ALMA Observatory’s IT team was all set to face the challenges of the situation and had a potent infrastructure to deal with these types of incidents. However, the company explained that there is no unbreachable defence against hackers.

The company clarified that they are still putting much effort into fully recovering their services and thanked everyone for understanding.

The ALMA Observatory in Chile has more than 60 high-precision telescopes of 12 meters in diameter arranged by its operators in two arrays. This observatory is based on the Chajnantor plateau, which is elevated for more than 16,000 ft (roughly 5,000 meters).

The project for the observatory cost over a billion dollars; therefore, it is the world’s most expensive ground telescope. The gigantic project was made possible by the multi-national efforts that involved countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Europe, Canada, Chile, and the United States of America.

Experts from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the European Southern Observatory, the National Science Foundation, and other scientists utilise this observatory. Therefore, the cyberattack has also halted numerous scientific projects worldwide.

Experts advise concerned users to check the status updates on NRAO’s website or the ALMA Observatory’s social media accounts.