Tag Archives: ddos

Learning from Cyberattacks

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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

Internet Archive Services Update: 2024-10-21

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In recovering from recent cyberattacks on October 8, the Internet Archive has resumed the Wayback Machine (starting October 13) and Archive-It (October 17), and as of today (October 21), has begun offering provisional availability of archive.org in a read-only manner. Features like uploading, borrowing, reviewing items, interlibrary loan, and other services are not yet available. 

Please note that these services will have limited availability as we continue maintenance. 

Hackers disclosed archive.org email and encrypted passwords to a transparency website, and also sent emails to patrons by exploiting a 3rd party helpdesk system.

The safety and integrity of the Internet Archive’s data and patrons remain our top priorities. As the security incident is analyzed and contained by our team, we are relaunching services as defenses are strengthened. These efforts are focused on reinforcing firewall systems and further protecting the data stores.

We appreciate your patience and support as we work through these challenges. For ongoing updates, please follow our blog and official social media channels on X/Twitter, Bluesky, and Mastodon.

We stand with all libraries that have faced similar attacks—British Library, Seattle Public Library, Toronto Public Library, and Calgary Public Library—and with the communities we serve. Thank you for standing with the Internet Archive as we continue to fight back on behalf of all affected readers.

Internet Archive Services Update: 2024-10-17

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[Washinton Post piece]

Last week, along with a DDOS attack and exposure of patron email addresses and encrypted passwords, the Internet Archive’s website javascript was defaced, leading us to bring the site down to access and improve our security. 

The stored data of the Internet Archive is safe and we are working on resuming services safely. This new reality requires heightened attention to cyber security and we are responding. We apologize for the impact of these library services being unavailable.

The Wayback Machine, Archive-It, scanning, and national library crawls have resumed, as well as email, blog, helpdesk, and social media communications.  Our team is working around the clock across time zones to bring other services back online. In coming days more services will resume, some starting in read-only mode as full restoration will take more time. 

We’re taking a cautious, deliberate approach to rebuild and strengthen our defenses. Our priority is ensuring the Internet Archive comes online stronger and more secure.

As a library community, we are seeing other cyber attacks—for instance the British Library, Seattle Public Library, Toronto Public Library, and now Calgary Public Library. We hope these attacks are not indicative of a trend.

For the latest updates, please check this blog and our official social media accounts: X/Twitter, Bluesky and Mastodon.

Thank you for your patience and ongoing support.

Internet Archive and the Wayback Machine under DDoS cyber-attack

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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.”