We've told you about the Internet Archive before. It recently lost its appeal in a publisher lawsuit, which is a blow to digital media. But in addition to archiving electronic copies of books, the Internet Archive also keeps old news articles, social media posts, and other digital content.
It's an invaluable resource for a variety of reasons.
Yesterday, it was the target of a DDOS attack (the second this week) and security breach that exposed millions of users' data:
JUST IN - Internet Archive hacked. A popup claims there was a "catastrophic security breach" and now the site is down with a "temporarily offline" notice — The Verge pic.twitter.com/RufvctlB8X
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 9, 2024
And an update:
UPDATE - Have I Been Pwned, confirms 31M users "breached" in Internet Archive hack including email address, screen names, Bcrypt-hashed passwords, and other "internal data."https://t.co/UzWyvxB413
— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) October 9, 2024
This whole thing, happening just a couple of weeks before the presidential election, has raised more than a few eyebrows:
Say goodbye to a whole lot of things they do not want you to see about Kamala
— PhotographicFloridian (@JackLinFLL) October 9, 2024
Would anyone be surprised?
Sure it was... Theyve always wanted to take Down the Wayback Machine to scrub history
— Hexologist 🇺🇸 (@Hexologist31) October 9, 2024
The Wayback Machine is awesome.
I wonder what they are trying to memory hole.
— Planet Of Memes (@PlanetOfMemes) October 9, 2024
The possibilities are endless, frankly.
Twice in 2 days.
— mumzie (@spine1692) October 9, 2024
Sounds like somebody’s removing evidence.https://t.co/N0RyoQhZni https://t.co/XwW9rj0a3P pic.twitter.com/kSwDvxJ5TN
Really does sound suspicious.
Soon we will ALL be unburdened by what has been because they’re erasing f**king history. https://t.co/sAonJmfMA3
— Fiat Food (@FiatFood) October 10, 2024
This made us chuckle. But it's also true.
the internet archive got hacked? that’s crazy bro. the thing that has old news articles and old social posts and videos that contradict the blatant lies of the state-controlled media? that’s nuts my guy. right befor the election? that’s bonkers dude https://t.co/FaeIDzshFw
— zxy (@zelinarxy) October 9, 2024
The latest updates from Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, were posted last night:
Yesterday's DDOS attack on @internetarchive repeated today. We are working to bring https://t.co/Hk02WjumkL back online.
— Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) October 9, 2024
As of this morning, this writer could not access Internet Archive.
What we know: DDOS attack–fended off for now; defacement of our website via JS library; breach of usernames/email/salted-encrypted passwords.
— Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) October 10, 2024
What we’ve done: Disabled the JS library, scrubbing systems, upgrading security.
Will share more as we know it.
It'll be interesting to see if anything was removed.
Sorry, but DDOS folks are back and knocked https://t.co/Hk02WjumkL and https://t.co/Xb2ku5dgZs offline. @internetarchive is being cautious and prioritizing keeping data safe at the expense of service availability.
— Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) October 10, 2024
Will share more as we know it.
We'll keep an eye on this.