TECH NEWS – The Internet Archive is essentially a repository for the Internet, and has been hit by several DDoS attacks, creating a security threat!

As a result, engineers at the non-profit organization have taken down archive.org, and the site has been inaccessible since Wednesday. Initially, there was an error message that read: “Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive is running on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!” was the message from the attackers.

HIBP stands for Have I Been Pwned, a website where you can check if your email address or password has been compromised in an attack. The attackers have obtained the details of 31 million accounts, according to HIBP’s Troy Hunt and Brewster Kale, the site’s founder. “What we know: DDOS attack – defended for now; defacement of our site via JS [Javascript] library; breach of usernames/email/salted encrypted passwords,” Kale wrote. Our passwords were obtained in encrypted form, but if you have an Archive.org account, you should change your password as soon as possible.

What we know: DDOS attack–fended off for now; defacement of our website via JS library; breach of usernames/email/salted-encrypted passwords.

What we’ve done: Disabled the JS library, scrubbing systems, upgrading security.

Will share more as we know it.

— Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) October 10, 2024

Since the attack, Kale says Archive has disabled the JS library used to access the site and serve the previous popup, and is in the process of cleaning up systems and updating security. Unfortunately, the site was not able to do much about the DDOS attacks, but the DDoS attacks still made both openlibrary.org and archive.org inaccessible. The site is being cautious, prioritizing data security at the expense of service availability. But who’s behind the attack?

On Twitter, an account called SN_Blackmeta (claiming to be from Old Rus, Novgorod Oblast) claimed responsibility, saying it was attacking Archive because it belongs to America and its “horrible and hypocritical government supports the genocide being carried out by the terrorist ‘state of Israel'”. The Archive has no significant ties to the US government other than being based there.

So that’s why we can’t access the Archive these days…

Source: PCGamer