Milkyway: Where MilkyWay@home Was The Last Few Days

Hello Everyone,

On Friday, May 7th, RPI experienced a cyber-attack that forced RPI to rapidly take down their entire network. This included email, on-campus internet, and connection to the MilkyWay@home server. We were caught by surprise by the network going down, so we were unfortunately not able to warn our volunteers about this problem or shut down the server ahead of time.

We updated our social media a few times during this outage, but please understand that we did not know when service would come back up for MilkyWay@home until connection to the server actually came back up. During this time, RPI IT was working on understanding the extent of the attack, making sure that the attack did not get any worse, and setting up precautions for the future that would prevent this sort of attack. We were not in control of when the server went down or when it would go back up.

Please know that the attack did not impact Linux-based machines (such as the MilkyWay@home server). Additionally, no personal information on the website was accessed or affected by the cyber-attack.

Thank you volunteers for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions I'm happy to do my best to answer them.

Best,
Tom

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