Internet Archive remains offline for now
The "Wayback Machine" is currently unavailable. According to its founder, this is intentional as it will take some time to rebuild after a cyberattack.
Following an attack on the Internet's memory, Internet Archive will remain offline for now. This is a conscious decision and not an indication of a malfunction caused by the attack. This is evident from postings by the platform's founder, Brewster Kahle, on social media services.
On X, for example, he writes that the services are offline to be "investigated and strengthened". The archived data is safe. This information is particularly important because around 30 million hashed passwords from user accounts were also stolen during the digital intrusion into archive.org's systems. It could not be ruled out that the contents of the archive could also have been changed.
Shortly after the attack became known, there was a DDoS attack on the platform, meaning that many users were unable to set a new password immediately. The intrusion and a strange error message displayed by the archive meanwhile and the DDoS attack do not appear to be directly related. An earlier report describes the entire process.
Deep links only show error message
According to Brewster Kahle, the repair work will continue for a few days, but not weeks. At present, the archive.org homepage only shows a reference to the offline status of the project, including a link to Kahle's postings. However, if you click on one of the numerous direct links to the site's content available on the Internet, you will receive a browser timeout error message without any further information. For many users, the service, also known as the "Wayback Machine", may simply appear to be defective from the outside.
Internet Archive has existed since 1996 and has had the status of a library since 2007. This made it possible to offer not only websites, but also books, films, software and other content. Much of this can also be borrowed digitally, but the usual volume restrictions also apply to state libraries, for example, to prevent the mass distribution of copyright-protected content. The user accounts that have now been compromised were necessary for this, among other things.
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