This week, the Internet Archive has been the target of several DDos attacks that have forced the website offline. When the online database crashed today, The Verge saw a popup on the website. Although the popup has vanished, the website is not accessible at this time.
Troy Hunt, a security researcher, claims that the DDoS attack coincided with the Internet Archive’s preparation to reveal a previous site breach that led to the loss of over 31 million records. The timing of the two attacks seems to be “completely coincidental,” according to Hunt, the owner of the haveibeenpwned site, and “many parties” are probably involved. He wrote, “It is evidently not a single attack.”
Brewster Kahle, the founder of Internet Archive, has been providing updates on the attacks on X; the most recent information just states that the team is working to restore the site to its previous state. Blackmeta, a DDoS group, took credit for the attacks and stated in an ambiguous manner that the platform “belongs to the USA.” The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization with its main office located in San Francisco. It hosts the Wayback Machine online archive and offers free access to a large collection of media and software. The message also mentioned the compromised records, citing Hunt’s haveibeenpwned website, which tracks hacked accounts, as “HIBP.”
Although DDoS attacks have previously targeted the archive, this week’s strikes are the most recent in a run of unfortunate events for the Internet Archive. The platform has been involved in a legal dispute with the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit about ebook copyrights, and it just lost that appeal.