The Wayback Machine, Archive.org, Archive-it.org, and OpenLibrary.org came up in stages over the week after cyberattacks with some of the contributor features coming up over the last couple of weeks. A few to go. Much of the development during this time has been focused on securing the services so they can still run while attacks continue.
The Internet Archive is adapting to a more hostile world, where DDOS attacks are recurring periodically (such as yesterday and today), and more severe attacks might happen. Our response has been to harden our services and learn from friends. This note is to share some high level findings, without being so detailed as to help those that are still attacking archive.org.
By tightening firewall technologies, we have changed how data flows through our systems to improve monitoring and control. The downside is these upgrades have forced changes to software, some of it quite old.
The bright side is this is forcing upgrades that we have long planned or hoped for. We are greatly helped by the free and open source community’s improving tools that can be used by large corporations as well as non-profit libraries because they are freely available.
Also, some commercial companies have offered assistance that would generally be prohibitively expensive. We are grateful for the support.
Where the Internet Archive has always focused on building collections and preserving them, we have been starkly reminded how important reliable access is to researchers, journalists, and readers. This is leading us to install technical defenses and increase staff to improve service availability.
Libraries in general, and the Internet Archive in specific, have been under attack for many years now. For us it started with the book publishers suing (about lending books), and now the recording industry (about 78rpm records), which is a drain on our staff and financial resources. Now recurring DDOS attacks distract us from the goals of preservation and access to our digital heritage.
We don’t know why these attacks have started recently and if they are coordinated, but we are building defenses.
We are grateful for the support from our patrons, through social media, through donations, and through offers of help, which frankly, makes it worthwhile to keep building a library for all of us.
– Brewster Kahle
02024 has been a terrifying year for Internet freedom. Not that any of the years of this decade have been any better really. Many powerful entities (& not just the usual suspects either) see the likes of the Internet Archive & morbidly fear that they are losing control. They use new slurs like “disinformation” to shame & shutter open inquiry & reasonable discourse.
I hope that as the Millennials – my generation – grow into more positions of authority & influence worldwide, we will be able to reverse the current trend towards opacity & unlock the handcuffs of fear & reprisal on netizens.
These attacks are sus af. I’d be surprised if they were NOT connected to the music industry lawsuit.
Of course they are coordinated. Libraries are under attack worldwide.
Dear Mr. Kahle,
From Indonesia, it’s only thankfulness and best wishes for you and all the archive.org team members. It’s truly an invaluable work of you all that the whole human civilization had been enjoying numerous benefits. Let me know how to contribute/donate to the Internet Archive banking accounts, since we do not have any PayPall etc. and haven’t understood well how to use them. All the best to you, Comrade.
Digital Archivist, NU-DIRECT-1926
So grateful for all that you do!
Would I be right in thinking that the services required to upload Librivox.org audiobooks to your site are not yet operational?
Brewster Kahle,
Some great insights on the problems one has after these wanton attacks upon IA. Starting anew and building blocks that help flow this wonderful organization. The Why’s are easy. Just because one can, figuring They can get away with it. The actual rhymes or reasons can vary. What matters most is hoping ways to stop them vigilantly so it does not continue on this destructive path.
Keep up the great information you’ve given us on this situation. We wait until the work is done and time is clear for a better Internet Archive for us All.
Alan
I wish there was a service status hub that lists what services are working or to what extent such services are working. For example, a one-time upload appears to work. Uploads that target an existing virtual directory appear to fail (e.g. ia upload Virtual_Directory SomeFile1 SomeFile2).
The “ia” command-line client also fails with a cryptic error: “The request signature we calculated does not match the signature you provided. Check your AWS Secret Access Key and signing method. For more information, see REST Authentication and SOAP Authentication for details.”
This is terrible, but it was just a new development in the continued hacking of your site by those who disapprove of some of your material. For quite some time now the hackers have attacked videos that show nudity. This is evident in the severe multiple video stoppages of these videos. Because of the stoppages, a video might be bombarded with a stoppage every two seconds, and last for much longer. So, for instance, a video that normally might run for 30 minutes will now take 3 hours! The amount of interference varies, but I have timed videos to run well over 20 hours!!!! The ZEALOTS who are behind these attacks especially don’t like the videos by or about Frank Moore. These ZEALOTS also attack other videos containing nudity, and they attack other sites in the same way. I don’t know how you would be able to restore these videos, but it is a constant battle waged by the people who disapprove of SOME of your content. I am rooting for you folks!!!!
>…..< Before the attack there was books that I was able to read and then few days later after these books where taken down so was the site this was mine outside view looking in. Also at leased it's just cyberattacks unlike the police in mine area posting anything get you search.
Thank you Brewster Kahle for the update…I still cannot edit or remove a file (for those of us who want to correct mistakes)…..I’m sure that this will be made available to us in the near future as you continue to modify your website……please continue to post updates
Many of the 78s I seen on Archive.org before the attack are not available anymore. Any idea when they will be back?
Thank you for your time
Thank you so much for all you’re doing, and how much work I know it has been to get things running again!
I was wondering if there are any updates on when uploading material to our own collections will be possible. I’ve been holding off on uploading things, but if it’s going to be another long time, I might just upload stuff and deal with the organizational issues later.
Deleting files still doesn’t work.
Greetings,
I’m glad the site is coming back up, However, since its been coming back up I can’t download the .acsm file on loans, and I can’t see any news or announcements regarding loans. Please let me know when loans will be available for downloads, Thanks
Please inform us about restoring the IIIF related services and iiif.archive.org domain?
Thank you.