The Internet Archive, located at archive.org, has resumed operation after a recent hacker attack, but is still in read-only mode. Earlier, one of the world’s largest digital libraries and the Wayback Machine became victims of a large-scale DDoS attack. Then hackers managed to steal a database containing 31 million unique user records, including email addresses, usernames and hashed passwords.
Image source: web.archive.org
Read-only mode allows you to view archived web pages, but the ability to add new data to the archive is temporarily unavailable. Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle said: “The service is back online, but there may be further interruptions to allow for additional maintenance work.” This temporary solution addresses vulnerabilities identified during a cyber attack.
The Archive team continues to actively work to restore key services and strengthen protection. In addition to restoring basic functionality, employee mailboxes and crawlers for working with national libraries were returned to service.
The Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive’s flagship tool, provides access to more than 916 billion stored web pages, making it an invaluable resource for studying Internet history. Its importance increased after Google removed links to its own cached pages from search results and began adding links to archived sites in the Wayback Machine, now the main tool for accessing older versions of sites and archived pages.