In mid-September the Living New Deal suffered a serious setback when tens of thousands of photographs and documents were deleted in what we believe was a politically motivated hack. Fortunately, the hack left all text and other data unscathed and we have backup for 95 percent of the lost photographs. Unfortunately, the worm ate through recent backups on the host server, so our staff and associates will need to spend hundreds of hours digging up lost photographs that were entered into the system over the summer.
All this is quite costly for us. In addition to restoring the photograph collection we hired a security firm to remove lingering code the hackers left behind and install more protective software and stronger security. In addition, we will need to change to a better defended server host and bring on board more IT expertise to support the hard work of our webmaster, Lisa Thompson. If you wish to help us defray these costs, please contact Kurt Feichtmeir.