The Internet Archive and its Wayback Machine have been down for days following a major hack. But the nonprofit says no archived data was lost, even though information on 31 million users was stolen.“The data is safe,” Internet Archive Founder Brewster Kahle tweeted on Friday. Users can expect the site to return in “days, not weeks,” he added. Kahle decided to take the site offline to improve the archive’s security after the hack as well as multiple DDoS attacks intended to knock the archive offline.
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The breach naturally raised concerns about the hacker potentially destroying all the data stored by the archive, including the over 840 billion web pages. But on Friday, Kahle said the data had “not been corrupted.” “Services are currently stopped to upgrade internal systems,” he added in a separate tweet. “We are working to restore services as quickly and safely as possible.”Jason Scott, an archivist for the nonprofit, added on Mastodon: “I’ve been watching the organization work to clean up the mess left by others and the team at the place is really just top notch.” He’s also signaled that the Internet Archive is using the downtime to bolster the overall experience. It’s unclear how the hacker breached the Internet Archive. But the attacker was able to access email addresses, usernames, and hashed passwords belonging to 31 million accounts. In addition, the culprit temporarily hijacked a JavaScript library for an Internet Archive domain to display a pop-up on Wednesday warning users that the site had been compromised.
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A Twitter/X account called SN_Blackmeta has claimed responsibility for the hack, justifying it as a protest against the US government’s support for Israel. However, the explanation has only received backlash from social media users, who point out the Internet Archive is merely a nonprofit based in San Francisco dedicated to acting as a free online library. SN_Blackmeta, which is portraying itself as hacktivist group, has also been launching DDoS attacks against other companies over their alleged support of Israel. On Thursday, the group published a video in Russian suggesting it’s planning more cyberattacks.
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About Michael Kan
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I’ve been working as a journalist for over 15 years—I got my start as a schools and cities reporter in Kansas City and joined PCMag in 2017.
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