The last few days have not been very good for Internet Archive. The digital library and Wayback Machine went down last week following a data breach and DDoS attack on October 9. Luckily, they are now recovering and millions of web pages are available again.
Internet Archive is a non-profit organization founded in 1996 whose goal is to preserve and provide universal access to knowledge. It is a digital library that stores millions of copies of pages, books, music, videos, software and other items in digital format so that they are available for future generations. Thanks to this tool, we can access archived versions of websites and see how they have changed over time.
However, everything has changed in recent weeks. Internet Archive suffered a DDoS (Denial of Service Attack) attack a few days ago and a user authentication database with 31 million unique records was stolen. In fact, when trying to access the Wayback Machine, a pop-up message appeared informing them that they had suffered a “catastrophic security breach.”
This caused the large digital library to fall and make it impossible to access the content they stored. Little by little, Internet Archive is returning to normal. However, we must not forget that email addresses, usernames, encrypted passwords and other private data were leaked. Therefore, we must be careful if we receive emails suspected of being fraud, for example.
Internet Archive returns, but not completely
Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive, has announced on his X account (formerly Twitter) that the bad news is over and that the Wayback Machine has returned. It has done so “provisionally and read-only” until they finish fixing the problems resulting from the cyber attacks: “It is safe to resume it, but it could require more maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again.”
Brewster Kahle
@brewster_kahle
The @internetarchive’s Wayback Machine summarized 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.
October 14, 2024 • 06:49
5.8K
100
Just because the Internet Archive is back, doesn’t mean it’s back completely. While it is possible to access the Wayback Machine and search through the 916 billion archived pages, these can only be read. That is, it is not possible to capture a website like you could do something. These services will be something that the Archive.org team will gradually restore.
The process is complicated, since the nonprofit must even recover its own email accounts and trackers for the National Libraries. In the time that Internet Archive has been out of sight, the team has been tasked with examining the consequences of the attack and attempting to harden its systems against future attacks.
It is important that Internet Archive improves its security against possible cyber threats. Especially after Google started adding links to web pages archived in the Wayback Machine when searching on its services. The news of its implementation in the search engine was a step forward in the project and the DDoS cyber attack has undermined its progress.
Now, the Internet Archive must work to recover from the hard blow of cybercriminals to continue being the “digital Alexandria library” that helps preserve archived pages for the future. Thus, users can continue accessing previous versions of websites whenever necessary. At the moment, you can only read millions of them and the team may temporarily limit your access again. But let’s hope that soon we will be able to capture again when necessary.
