Massive attacks on the Internet Archive

31 million pieces of data stolen

The Internet Archive has fallen victim to a hacker attack. Allegedly, a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group has compromised the web archive. They managed to hack the website and steal a database containing the login details of 31 million users.

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The stolen data was passed on to Troy Hunt, the operator of the website “Have I Been Pwned” (HIBP). This database contains email addresses, usernames, timestamps of password changes and Bcrypt-hashed passwords as well as other internal information.

To verify the authenticity of the data, Hunt contacted a number of affected individuals, including cyber security expert Scott Helme. He confirmed that his password stored in the database was exactly the same as the one he had saved in his password manager. The time of his last password change also matched the timestamp in the database.

Hunt informed the Internet Archive about the incident three days ago and tried to disclose the incident, but so far he has not received a response. It is still unclear how the hackers infiltrated the system. In addition to the data theft, the Internet Archive was also the victim of a DDoS attack.

What is the Internet Archive?

The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco that was founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle. It aims to create a digital library that stores a wide range of content and makes it available to the public free of charge. The Internet Archive’s best-known feature is the Wayback Machine, which allows users to search previous versions of websites and restore lost content. By the end of 2023, the archive contained over 839 billion websites.

In addition to web archiving, the Internet Archive also offers an extensive digital library. It currently contains more than 46 million books, over 11 million videos and 14 million audio files. The archive strives to offer materials in various formats and is also committed to accessibility for people with disabilities.