The historical archive of the internet was hacked and affected 31 million people

It should be noted that this is one of the most critical moments for Internet Archive, since in addition to the data leak, it was also the victim of a denial of service (DDoS) attack by a group of hackers, according to Brewster Khale, one of the founders of the digital archive.

Why is the Internet Archive important?

The Internet Archive is a nonprofit organization that was founded in San Francisco in 1996, with the goal of keeping safe the history of what was then a growing computing juggernaut.

Throughout these almost 30 years of history, the digital project has brought together more than 886,000 million web pages, more than 44 million books, more than 10.6 million videos, movies and television programs.

The hosting of all this information is also part of a collective effort, as it is stored in several data centers spread around the world that resist digital oblivion.

Mark Graham, director of the Wayback Machine, the tool that instantly collects and stores websites for the Internet Archive, told the BBC that the importance of this type of initiative is based on the fact that humanity’s efforts at intellectual levels, entertainment, informational and personal are found only on a digital plane and “that environment is inherently fragile.”

According to data from a recent study by the Pew Research Center, a quarter of all the pages that were created between 2013 and 2023 no longer exist and although it may seem like a problem that only interests technology enthusiasts , also has a social impact since one in five government sites contains at least one broken link, which prevents access to public files.

Even Wikipedia has had to face this problem, as the Pew report revealed that more than half of the articles on this site have a broken link in their references section, that is, the sources that support the information are slowly dying.

In fact, last September, Google restored the function of displaying a cached web page in search results, thanks to the Internet Archive database.

However, Graham highlights that throughout their history they have been victims of various computer attacks or technical and financial challenges, as well as legal battles by businesses who dislike the idea of ​​them keeping a free copy of their intellectual property.