The Internet Archive, the nonprofit research library that’s home to millions of historical documents, preserved websites, and media content, is currently in its third day of warding off an intermittent DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) cyber-attack. According to library staff, the collections are safe, though service remains inconsistent. Access to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine – which preserves the history of more than 866 billion web pages – has also been impacted.
Since the attacks began on Sunday, the DDoS intrusion has been launching tens of thousands of fake information requests per second. The source of the attack is unknown.
“Thankfully the collections are safe, but we are sorry that the denial-of-service attack has knocked us offline intermittently during these last three days,” explained Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive. “With the support from others and the hard work of staff we are hardening our defenses to provide more reliable access to our library. What is new is this attack has been sustained, impactful, targeted, adaptive, and importantly, mean.”
Cyber-attacks are increasingly frequent against libraries and other knowledge institutions, with the British Library, the Solano County Public Library (California), the Berlin Natural History Museum, and Ontario’s London Public Library all being recent victims.
In addition to a wave of recent cyber-attacks, the Internet Archive is also being sued by the US book publishing and US recording industries associations, which are claiming copyright infringement and demanding combined damages of hundreds of millions of dollars and diminished services from all libraries.
“If our patrons around the globe think this latest situation is upsetting, then they should be very worried about what the publishing and recording industries have in mind,” added Kahle. “I think they are trying to destroy this library entirely and hobble all libraries everywhere. But just as we’re resisting the DDoS attack, we appreciate all the support in pushing back on this unjust litigation against our library and others.”
There must be better protection against DoS attacks. I can imagine BIND protocol change.
Or more agressive: detect and confirm IP of incoming pings and automatically ping back, but tenfold.
This was not what the net was built for of course. Until about 1996, internet still was University dominated. Since images were not supported…
Our world needs more readers, less visuals, less adolescent influencers.
I hate these pieces of garbage who can’t respect the hard work of the Internet Archive.
Good luck yall.
Thank you so much for communicating the situation!
I support the Archive and I hope enough people can see these attacks on humanity’s information sources for what they are.
Seattle Public Library is another recent example:
“In the early morning hours of Saturday, May 25 the [Seattle Public] Library became aware of a ransomware event affecting our technology systems.” https://shelftalkblog.wordpress.com/today/
Likewise at Toronto Public Libraries last fall – a ransomware attack that kept computer systems down till January 2024.
Am I the only one baffled as to who would want to take the IA offline, and why?
If the IA ever learns who is behind these attacks, I hope it will see fit to tell us. I would be very interested to know just who it is who thinks the IA is a bad idea.
Call me cynical but I would say either publishers or lets go conspiracy mode something incriminating sad caught by a snapshot of someone powerful and they plan on burying it this way
If it’s a publisher, joke’s on them. Rather than buying one of the books that I need for research–many obscure, some overpriced–one might be inclined to go from the at least mostly law-abiding Internet Archive to those less concerned with upholding the law – the equivalent of SciHub, but for books.
And one might even venture beyond the realms of what one is strictly required to read, and explore the vast numbers of books there.
do you know about libgen? it’s a closer equivalent to scihub for books than IA imo
I wouldn’t absolutely rule out any bad actor, but I doubt that it is a commercial entity: the risk and consequences of exposure far outweigh any small benefit they would have received.
However, the list of other suspects is immense. Archives and libraries have critical functions for culture, for democracy, for justice; they are the sources of reliable record, the guardians of history. They are a light shining into dark places, and that is anathema to all the forces of evil, from superpowers down to street hoods.
On simple probabilities, you would say “Chinese or Russian governments” (or their nominally deniable proxies), since they certainly hate the truth, and EFF has found that between them, those governments are the source of just under half of all cybercrime. But probably not this time: they can mount much more effective attacks than causing a service to become “inconsistent.” But that still leaves thousands of tin-pot dictators, organized crime figures, hate groups, hacktivists for extremist organisations, they whole stinking morass of the internet’s underbelly.
This can be taken to strongly suggest there may be greater reasons to protect and support Internet Archive than any of us can know or imagine.
Maybe those publishers are not so confident in their litigation, after all?
We the public, support IA in this fight.
Who would want to take IA down?
Two kinds:
1) People who thinks the public should not have access to information unless they pay for it.
2) People who thinks the public should not have access to information.
The latter includes for-profit peddlers of misinformation, as well as nation states that rely on misinformation tactics.
Sadly, this doesn’t narrow the field very much.
Thanks to the IA for preserving and making freely available our collective recorded creations and memories! The DDOS demons will fail against the brilliant minds at our Library, as will the private entities seeking to profit from or silence and suppress the books that inform our lives. Long Live the Internet Archive!
Whoever it is, they’re doing it to all of us, including themselves. Good thing we’re in it together, including them. Hopefully they come around some day. Good luck continuing to harden things, and if you could use help reach out.
This is absolutely not OK, these people have put in their blood, sweat, tears, hearts and souls to this wonderful work. This DDOS attack is a front for everything this website stands for, it’s a freaking library! I don’t care what your motivations are, nobody has the right to deny people the right to learn, discover or remember things that they want: from anime lovers watching old shows, old cartoon songs to be sung and timeless lessons to be retold this website is too important to humanity as a whole.
If anyone is in agreement, then please follow these links and do everything you can to pitch in: https://www.battleforlibraries.com/ and https://www.battleforlibraries.com/congress/. Lastly, i have a sneaking suspicion that i’m the only one who nearly lost their damn mind over this incident, so please brothers and sisters make your voices known and support this site with all the love and support you can give it.
Spread this tagline: “Long Live the Internet Archive!”
I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a state-sponsored attack. Countries like China, Russia, North Korea have governments that don’t want all the public information to be universally accessible.
It is sad to see IA having to spend extra money and effort on DDoS protection, instead of the core duty, that is data archival.
cloudflare?
June 6th today. I again can’t check a website in the Wayback Machine, the page load is stalled. Google has ended its cached pages, so Wayback Machine is probably experiencing increased traffic. There is no other good source for viewing past webpages except for Wayback Machine. I believe the attacks are to prevent people from accessing cached information, that others want disappeared.
Who ever they are, i am sure about one thing… they think we are Goyim (cattle) and Goyim have not the right to learn.
So they think they have the right to destroy our libraries.
Why are so many commenters asking who is behind this, and why it’s happening? The IA is being incredibly humble, likely to not unintentionally give fodder for the publishing companies and record labels that they may find themself battling in court in the future, but the passive mention of those entities should make it obvious to readers why this is happening. This is no single person or copyright holder, but professionals. Id bet money that this is an intimidation tactic by these entities, who have recruited a highly eq
equipped “ddos as a service” company from the darkweb. Its not ransomware, so this is the only logical motive anyone would have. From Napster, to the piratebay, to z-lib (original verson), to commandeering censorship of youtube vids, these publishers have been the dominate gatekeepers of entertainment and educational media since the beginning, and utilize their amassed riches to
influence policy (DMCA, for example). Open information is under attack, microsoft has already changed the direction of OSS by acquiring github, and the American government recently demanded tiktok be sold to them. Its about making as much money as possible, and censoring things that indirectly influence other ventures that they , or their advertisers, have stakes in. These greed-motivated power grabs continue to taint the best things about the free and open internet, and I hope the users and the volunteer communities continue to stand on the side that benefits all of society, and not the wealthiest 2%. Enough is enough. We gotta write, for our right, to accessible self-education materials! -a concerned Gen Y Netizen
its people who dont want us knowing our past the same people behind the taring down of national monuments.Those who control the past control the future. I have a feeling that the eclipse we just had was to cover up something else . Go back and see if there was suppose to be an eclipse that day youll be suprised . Also the Northern Lights being seen half way around the world and now a comet with a tail visible with the naked eye. Not to leave out the anomoly comming out of antartica the day after the eclipse.