One of the more useful, long-time websites on the Internet is the Internet Archive, aka The Wayback Machine, which contains captured, iterative versions of a vast amount of the World Wide Web.
Except that, right now, the site is offline and under attack by hackers.
“Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and stones and is constantly on the verge of a major security breach? It just happened.”
“The Wayback Machine [is] one of the most important websites in the history of the Internet, because it literally archives the history of the Internet. It’s been taking snapshots of websites, including their HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and images since 1996, allowing us to remember the worldwide web in its peak form, when Amazon looked like this and weird people made weird websites just for fun. Unlike nowadays where everybody just chases algorithms on cringe factories like Tik-Tok and Instagram.”
It was founded by digital librarian Brewster Kahle.
“Unfortunately, the fate of this website hangs in the balance, as it’s currently getting pwned, boned and owned from multiple angles.”
“A data breach exposed 31 million email addresses and password hashes. Its Open Library lost a critical legal battle. Its website was defaced with some JavaScript graffiti. It’s been getting DOSed non-stop, and its current status is offline as we speak. What the hell is going on?”
“The Wayback Machine contains over 890 billion archived web pages weighing in at nearly 100 petabytes. It’s an unimaginable amount of data. If you look at one web page every second for the next 100 years, you would have looked at less than 1% of the total archive.”
“This data is practically irreplaceable. The only company that might be able to replace it is Google, but Google recently stopped using its own cached archive, and its search results now points to, you guessed it, the Internet Archives Wayback Machine.”
“We don’t know if the hackers have access to the archived website data, but if they do, and they might, they have the power to erase the history of the world wide web.”
“The Internet Archive will remove personal data and comply with GDPR [the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation], but some people want legitimate content to be memory-holed forever.”
Section on their Open Library project losing a lawsuit to publishers snipped.
“HIBP (which is not an STD, but rather a website that helps people find out if their data has been compromised in a data breach) was informed of the Internet Archives data breach on September 30th. It’s confirmed on October 5th. The Internet Archive gets notified on October 6th [before] making the data breach public on October 8th.
“The Internet Archive has been been facing aggressive DOS attacks going all the way back to May.”
“The website is defaced with some JavaScript library which triggers an alert message about the data breach before it’s been officially disclosed.”
“Right now on October 10th, the website is still being attacked and is completely offline. Things are not looking good.”
“What sort of sick, twisted hacker would want to mess with the Internet Archive, and why? Well, a hacktivist group called Blackmeta is claiming responsibility.”
“They say they’re not a bunch of teenagers, which means that they’re probably just a bunch of teenagers.”
According to this post, “Attributed by Radware to SN_BLACKMETA, a pro-Palestinian hacktivist with potential ties to Sudan that may operate from within Russia.” YouTuber Fireship (whose video this is) thinks that’s a false flag, but his reasons are “This doesn’t make sense and won’t get people to like you,” which hasn’t stopped those End Oil idiots. Indeed “this is stupid and makes people hate you” describes a vast array of real “activist” actions going all the way back to the Symbionese Liberation Army and attempts to levitate the Pentagon back in the 1960s, so I think Fireship’s deduction here is off-base.
Could be pro-Palestinian sorts, who have never seemed to care about “making friends” while raping women and beheading babies. Or it could be any number of social justice types, whose Khmer Rouge-esque “Year Zero” vibe jibs nicely with wiping out the Internet’s history. Or maybe they’re trying to erase Kamala Harris’ obvious past idiocies.
In any case, let’s all hope this attack fails, and that the Wayback Machine has robust, rotating offline backups…