The International Meteor Organization (IMO), a Belgium-based nonprofit that coordinates meteor observations by amateur and professional astronomers worldwide, has had much of its website taken offline following a cyberattack. The organisation says the incident dealt a "critical blow" to its ageing infrastructure and warns that several weeks of partial downtime will follow as it transitions to new systems, disrupting a service relied upon by observers globally.

IMO has not disclosed when the attack took place, how the attackers gained access, or whether any data was accessed or encrypted. It prioritised restoring its fireball-reporting function, which is now back online, allowing members of the public to submit sightings of bright meteors, though other parts of the site remain unavailable. The Register put questions to the organisation about the timing, affected systems, potential data compromise and the perpetrators' identity, but had not received a response at the time of writing.