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The Internet Archive goes down for security upgrades after a data breach and distributed denial of service attack affect its services
MANILA, Philippines – A threat actor compromised the security of The Internet Archive and stole a user authentication database with 31 million unique records, BleepingComputer reported Wednesday, October 9.
The Internet Archive is a digital library website that offers free access to digitized or otherwise saved versions of various materials, such as websites, software applications, music, audiovisual material, and print materials.
BleepingComputer, who spoke with Have I Been Pwned founder Troy Hunt, said the stolen data “contains authentication information for registered members, including their email addresses, screen names, password change timestamps, Bcrypt-hashed passwords, and other internal data.”
Users are currently unable to access archive.org or other portions of The Internet Archive, as founder Brewster Kahle confirmed the breach had occurred, and the site was down to have its internal systems upgraded.
It was doing so out of caution, and “prioritizing keeping data safe at the expense of service availability.”
As of October 11, Kahle added the data of The Internet Archive has not been corrupted but it has stopped operating its services while the systems upgrade was ongoing.
A report from The Verge, citing Hunt, said an account on X going by the name SN_Blackmeta took responsibility for a distributed denial of service attack on The Internet Archive which occurred at around the same time as the breach and subsequent defacement and downtime.
That said, no one has claimed responsibility for the data breach and defacement.
Jason Scott, an archivist with The Internet Archive, meanwhile said on Mastodon that the DDoS attack was done without any particular purpose.
Said Scott, “According to their Twitter, they’re doing it just to do it. Just because they can. No statement, no idea, no demands.” – Rappler.com
