Internet Archive Back After Cyberattack, Now in Read-Only Mode

The Internet Archive has returned online in a limited, read-only state after a cyberattack last week brought down its services, including the Wayback Machine.

This comes after the popular archiving website was attacked on October 9th, which included a data breach and a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) assault. An authentication database with 31 million unique records was also stolen, prompting security concerns.

Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive, confirmed that the digital library is now operating in a “provisional, read-only manner” and warned users that further maintenance could result in another temporary shutdown. “Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again,” Kahle said, according to The Verge.

While users can still access the Wayback Machine, which allows searching of over 916 billion archived web pages, they are currently unable to capture new pages into the archive. Kahle’s team has been working to restore additional services, including the team’s email accounts and National Library crawlers, which had also been taken offline for security enhancements.

A hacker claiming responsibility for the attack posted a pop-up message last week, asserting that the archive had suffered a “catastrophic security breach.” This claim was later confirmed by data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, which verified that email addresses, hashed passwords, screen names, and other internal data for 31 million accounts had been stolen.

The attack on the Internet Archive comes at a time when the site had just begun to see expanded usage, with Google adding links to archived pages from the Wayback Machine in its search results. This partnership is particularly useful for users needing access to older versions of websites, as Google had removed its own cached pages feature earlier this year. (GFB)