Internet Archive is a non-profit organization digital library, which archives the Internet. The site gives you free access to digitized materials, including archived versions of websites, applicationmusic, audiovisual materials and scans of printed press. As the creators emphasize, the aim of the project is to provide “universal access to all knowledge”.
Unfortunately, for several days the Internet archive has been facing an unprecedented wave attacks DDoS (this type of attacks involve flooding a given website with as many requests as possible at the same time). As a result, the website runs very slowly, which makes access to its resources difficult.
Internet Archive victim of hacker attack. Data of millions of users was leaked
These attacks culminated in a message that greeted users on Wednesday afternoon US time. A message that only confirmed that the site had fallen victim to a dangerous threat attack hacker.
Have you ever had the impression that the Internet Archive is operating on its word of honor and is constantly on the verge of a catastrophic security breach? That's what happened. We see the 31 million of you on HIBP
– we could read in the entry posted by cybercriminals.
What is the mysterious “HIBP”? It's short for “Have I Been Pwned”. This is the name of the website run by Troy Hunt, a well-known cybersecurity expert, which allows you to check whether you have fallen victim to one of the global data leaks in the past.
Hackers who broke into the Internet Archive they directly suggested that they had the data of as many as 31 million users service. Unfortunately, it quickly turned out that these were not just boasts.
Troy Hunt himself spoke to Bleeping Computer a few days ago confirmed that it had received a file containing “email addresses, usernames and password change timestamps, encrypted passwords and other internal data” about 31 million users.
At the same time, he reported that 54 percent of these accounts were already in the HIBP database, which means that they were victims of one of the previous data leaks.
On Wednesday, Hunt published an entry on the X website in which he noted that on October 6 he contacted the Internet Archive administration and provided all the information obtained information about the attack. As he emphasized, when users were greeted by the message sent by the hackers, the website was already preparing to send a message informing about the hack and data leak.
Also on Wednesday, Brewster Kahle, one of the heads of the Internet Archive, published an entry in which he confirmed that the website had fallen victim to DDoS attacks, database hacking and user data leaks. He also assured that the IA has introduced appropriate safeguards to ensure that these incidents do not happen again.
In response to Kahle's post, one of the X users compared the attacks on the Internet Archive to the destruction of the Library of Alexandria. This analogy – maintaining the appropriate proportions, of course – seems quite interesting. Fortunately, in the case of the online library, no collections were irretrievably lost.
Attack on the Internet Archive. We know who is responsible for it
We also already know who is probably responsible for hacking into the Internet Archive. She admitted to the attack SN_Blackmeta hacker groupand the reason was allegedly the fact that the website belongs to the American government, which supports Israel in the war with Palestine.
The problem is that this is complete nonsense. Internet Archive is a non-governmental and apolitical organization, and in its archives it also has many resources about Palestine, access to which has been made difficult due to attacks by SN_Blackmet.
Internet Archive is not the only victim of SN_Blackmet's actions. In recent days, this organization has carried out attempts to attack other websites and applications (including AirBnb) that are supposedly associated with the US or supporting Israel in the war against Palestine.
The irony is that at the same time SN_Blackmeta itself supports one of the American companies. Group has a blue verification mark on the X portal, which means he's paying Elon Musk for access to the Premium subscription.