The prove you are human thing will be up for a while as there is a network wide DDOS in process and Armorama was down yesterday until this check was enable. We are still a long way off from building up our burst capacity to fix the issue as well.
~ Jim
If we need to be human then I’m in trouble! 
Good luck - I’ve been seeing a lot of DDoS attacks around the web lately.
Just someone’s weird form of satisfaction.
Thanks for doing all the heavy lifting and keeping the site up and running, Jim! My hat’s off to you, sir, for your skill and talent in doing so!
Let me just re-boot and I’ll let you know if I’m human! 
I mean, I get that hackers go after banks and places with a lot of personal data storage, but why go after model sites? It’s not like any of us has any money; we spend it all on our stashes and paint.
Maybe it’s the missus trying to find out what we’re hiding in our stashes?
The more data they collect means AI can build a much better picture of you and track you anywhere.
You know the captchas that ask you to identify the boxes with stoplights or buses; etc.?
You’ve been training robots how to navigate the world without having to utilize satellite GPS systems and instead rely on internal navigation for the past 15 years.
If it’s using MY captcha choices, no wonder these self-driving cars keep crashing! 
But on a more serious note, we are creating the machine species that will eventually eradicate us.
It was a malformed DDOS attack that permanently took down (destroyed) MSW…
The site is back now, but the content, decades of content, is gone forever…
This is serious business brothers…
I thought they found a cached copy out there someplace? I believe they’ve lost some stuff but not the decades previously believed gone.
Oh yes, they lost it all…
Three back up servers as well. They’re attacked to prevent victims of ransomware of being able to restore their site for free, when payment is the goal.
Fortunately, I’ve been keeping my own archive of misinformation, dumb statements, but most importantly outrights lies by certain individuals. Rest assured if this site ever goes down it’ll all live on.
Excellent!
If I ever need to restore my posts I know who to ask.
There’s a reason why you shouldn’t store your backup on anything connected to the net! Each should be a stand-alone snapshot to avoid getting infected…
Exactly – over 10 years ago at work we were ransomed at 9.30am one morning. Within 3 hours the previous night’s Server tape back-up (which I actually took home every night despite the debatable security aspect, in case of fire/flood on premises) restored us to full operation. As the manager who regularly drummed into all staff not to open suspect emails/attachments, my humiliation was spectacular as the one responsible for the breach…
At home I back up onto an external drive, also kept in a trusted secure location elsewhere. Eff the cloud.
MSW? Who is that?
Yep that’s it… Model Ship World, the user/member forum for the Nautical Research Guild…
The Site is back up, but there is no archive of postings, the attack took out the site and the three hosting backups… None of it’s left, the way back machine has none of the texts or images, I checked cause there was a lot I had on there that has been irretrievably lost… There was way too much… (50K members that was a large database)
There is content there now, they are in the full rebuilding stage, members that had archives of their content are slowly adding some of it back… The management has done yeoman’s work in getting it back online…
But it’s going to be a long road back…
Like I said, this is serious stuff…
I guess I find that ironic considering we have been abbreviating Model Shipwrights as MSW for 20 years now. 