ALMA Observatory Experts Scramble to Restore Public Website, Emails Services After Cyberattack

Six days after a cyberattack had crippled the operations of an observatory in Chile, authorities at Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) Observatory scrambled to restore it.

Observatory officials said its public website remained inaccessible, email services were limited, and the motive of the attackers remained a mystery.

ALMA Observatory announced the attack on Twitter.

The cyberattack occurred on Saturday, Oct. 29. It forced one of the world's advanced telescopes to suspend all astronomical observation, and its public website crashed.

Six days after the attack, the observatory's website remained inaccessible as the observatory's specialists scrambled to restore the system.

ALMA Observatory

ALMA nis estled high at about 5,058 meters (16,587 feet) above sea level on the dusty plains of the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile.

Sixty-eight radio telescopes spread to more than 16 kilometers distance, comprised the ALMA Observatory. It is the largest Earth-based astronomical project.

Its location gives the observatory a natural advantage in picking up radio signals from space.

The observatory became operational in 2013. Since then, it has proven its capability to detect distant signals that could have been lost upon entry to the Earth's atmosphere.

Light at millimeter and submillimeter levels are easily lost in the Earth's atmosphere. Its radio telescopes are capable of observing cosmic lights in the spectral boundary between infrared and radio, reports NRAO.

A majority of the objects in the universe emit this kind of energy, and detecting it has been the main focus of astronomers for years.

Event Horizon Telescope

The observatory was part of the Event Horizon Telescope project. Together with many telescopes, ALMA took part in the first-ever direct imaging of a black hole in 2019 (via IFLScience).

It had also reported the detection of water in the farthest part of the universe.

Astronomers acknowledged the observatory's telescopes as one of the most powerful astronomical tools. It is useful in studying the origin of the stars, planets and their systems, galaxies, and the search for extraterrestrial life.

ALMA, according to the European Southern Observatory (ESO), is capable of conducting observations on molecular gas. ESO is the co-operator of the observatory.

In April. ALMA helped discover the farthest galaxy candidate that has been observed so far.

Invaluable

The observatory became an invaluable instrument for observing cooler substances, such as gas and dust, in the universe.

Its inherent power due to its arsenals of radio telescopes has made ALMA the primary candidate to document the hard-to-observe places in the cosmos.

With ALMA's public website going offline and has remained inaccessible, it impacted hundreds of astronomers around the world who relied on it.

Limited Email Services

ALMA Observatory tweeted that the threat has been under control, but several of the observatory's email services are limited.

But it assured the public the threat actors did not succeed in compromising the observatory's antenna and its database.

It further said there is no specific timeframe for the observatory to return to normal operations.

Clueless

Observatory officials said they have not yet determined the possible motive of the cyberattack and the person or group responsible behind the attack.

The officials said they would continue the investigation. Forty engineers and computer experts are behind ALMA's computer systems.

Around 300 experts are working at the observatory.