The Internet Archive, a pivotal nonprofit research library renowned for preserving millions of historical documents, websites, and media content, is grappling with a disruptive denial-of-service (DDoS) attack for the third consecutive day. The attack has notably impacted the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, which archives the history of over 866 billion web pages.
Despite the challenges, library staff have assured that the collections remain secure, though users are experiencing intermittent access issues.
The cyber onslaught commenced on Sunday and has been characterised by an overwhelming barrage of fake information requests, numbering tens of thousands per second. The origins of this attack remain unidentified.
“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,” stated Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive.
This incident underscores a troubling trend of increasing cyber-attacks targeting libraries, knowledge institutions, and other social welfare institutions such as hospitals.
Compounding the Internet Archive’s current predicament is an ongoing legal battle with the US book publishing and recording industries associations suing the Archive for alleged copyright infringement, seeking damages amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, which could significantly impact library services.
As of now, the Archive is holding on its own. “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.” noted Kahle.
Recently, RansomHub, a notorious Russian cybercrime group, claimed responsibility for an attack on Christie’s, the famous auction centre. Additionally, a data breach at Cencora, a major US drug wholesaler, affected a dozen companies.
Also, hackers infiltrated 49 million Dell customers’ records via phishing and are now selling them on the Breach Forum.
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