The Way Back machine went offline due to being hacked on Wednesday after two denial-of-service attacks on Monday and Tuesday. In the hack, the details of 31 million members were stolen. It has been reported that a pro-Palestinian hacktivist group has claimed responsibility. They say:
“They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of ‘Israel,'” the group said.
According to Wikipedia, the Internet Archive is an American nonprofit digital library website founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle. It provides free access to collections of digitised materials, including websites, software applications, music, audiovisual, and print materials. As of September 5, 2024, the Internet Archive held more than 42.1 million print materials, 13 million videos, 1.2 million software programs, 14 million audio files, 5 million images, 272,660 concerts, and most importantly, over 866 billion web pages in its Wayback Machine. Its mission is committing to provide “universal access to all knowledge”.
As the Internet Archive contains an irreplaceable record of the web, this attempt to destroy the archive is the digital equivalent of the burning down of the Library of Alexandria.
As the Divine website, that I wrote for over six years, is no longer online, the Wayback Machine has enabled me to link to my stories mentioned on my website’s non-fiction page. But it being hacked and offline has me thinking: What if the Way Back Machine crashes permanently or goes out of business? I searched for other web archive services and found three, but none had links to the Divine articles.
One Response
The archive is back up, which is excellent. But it is sometimes very slow, so I am going to my screenshots plan for my website.