Internet Archive Remains Offline to Focus On Data Security After Breach

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The Internet Archive could be offline for a while to prioritize data security after a hacker breached the nonprofit and stole data on 31 million users.

In addition to the data breach, the organization has been fending off repeated DDoS attacks since Tuesday. On Thursday, the Internet Archive’s site was briefly restored, but then another DDoS attack knocked the domain and its Wayback Machine offline again.

The repeated attacks prompted the archive’s founder, Brewster Kahle, to tweet on Thursday morning that the Internet Archive “is being cautious and prioritizing keeping data safe at the expense of service availability. Will share more as we know it.”

The hacker made the breach known after briefly defacing the Internet Archive the day before with a pop-up that mentioned the nonprofit had suffered “a catastrophic security breach.” Kahle has since confirmed the breach, saying usernames, email accounts, and hashed passwords were stolen from the site.

The breach affects 31 million user accounts, according to data breach notification site Have I Been Pwned, which received a copy of the stolen data from the alleged attacker. Users can find out if they’re affected by using the HIBP site.

It's unclear how the data was stolen. But according to Kahle, the hacker defaced the Internet Archive by hijacking a JavaScript library for one of its sites.

In the meantime, the Twitter/X account @Sn_darkmeta has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attacks. “They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of ‘Israel,’” the account posted.

But the justification is facing blowback from users since the Internet Archive is merely a San Francisco-based nonprofit devoted to acting as a free online library. As a result, some users are condemning @Sn_darkmeta for carrying out the DDoS attacks.

In a since-deleted tweet, @Sn_darkmeta responded by saying: “We are not interested in your dog barking behind a mobile screen. If the Internet Archive was shut down for all countries and users, it's only a taste to experience deprivation. You're protesting and crying just because you can't enjoy a free service.”

"Imagine the people in Sudan and Gaza, millions are being subjected to genocide and you're just a bunch of fools reading about these events," the post added. "Innocent people don't need documentation because the truth is already clear: America, Europe and Israel are the greatest cancers in this universe."

The account has since published a video in the Russian language describing itself as hacktivist group.