The Internet Archive is back online in a limited, read-only mode after suffering a cyberattack last week. On 9 October 2024, the site experienced a data breach and a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack, leading to the suspension of its services, including the Wayback Machine. In recent weeks, a user authentication database containing 31 million unique records was also stolen, adding to the severity of the breach.
Brewster Kahle, the founder of the Internet Archive, announced on X (formerly Twitter) that while the platform is partially restored, it remains in a provisional state. Users can access and search through the 916 billion web pages stored in the Wayback Machine but are unable to add new web pages to the archive. Kahle also cautioned that further maintenance may be required, so the service could experience additional downtime.
The @internetarchive’s Wayback Machine resumed in a provisional, read-only manner.
Sorry, no Save Page Now yet.
Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again.
Please be gentle https://t.co/sb5tlvxQ26
More as it happens.
— Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) October 14, 2024
The attack was initially publicised by a hacker who claimed the archive had undergone a “catastrophic security breach.” This was later confirmed by Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), which revealed that the stolen data included email addresses, screen names, hashed passwords, and other internal information associated with 31 million accounts.
Prior to the data theft, the Internet Archive was hit by a DDoS attack, which was claimed by the BlackMeta hacktivist group. Despite the close timing of both attacks, HIBP founder Troy Hunt suggested that they were likely unrelated, involving multiple parties and appearing to be coincidental rather than part of a coordinated effort.
(Source: Brewster Kahle, via The Verge)
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