Cyber Attack on One of the World's Largest Telescopes

The ALMA observatory in Chile has been a bit quiet after hackers targeted its computer systems. One of the world's largest and most advanced telescopes has been forced to suspend operations after a cyber attack.

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World's Most Expensive Observatory Hit by Cyber Attack

The Observatory tweeted this week. "The threat has been contained and our experts are working hard to restore the affected systems. The attack did not compromise ALMA antennas or any scientific data"

The observatory partners with many international research organizations, including the European Southern Observatory, which Ireland joined four years ago. It is also part of the global Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) network, which was responsible for the first image of a black hole in 2019. Last year, ALMA detected for the first time in "exquisite resolution" what it believes is a moon-forming disk around a planet outside our solar system.

Thanks to the EHT collaboration, ALMA also helped to reveal the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way earlier this year. "It is not yet possible to estimate a date for the return to normal operations," ALMA said in a Twitter message after the suspension.