Internet Archive and Wayback Machine suffer a DDoS cyberattack that leaves the website intermittently without service

May 29. (Portaltic/EP) –

The digital library Internet Archive and his tool Wayback Machine have reported that they are being victims of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) cyber attack for three dayswhich has left access to its website intermittently without service, although it has not affected the file collections.

Internet Archive is a large non-profit digital library created in 1996. It was born with the objective of host all types of digital materials, from web pages, to multimedia content, to video games, to preserve them. For its part, the Wayback Machine is a tool of the Internet Archive service that is used to recover websites.

As reported by the organization, both Internet Archive and Wayback Machine have been victims of a DDoS attack since last Sundaywhich has caused your service to be offline intermittently during these three days, limiting access to your website.

The distributed denial of service cyber attacks They take advantage of specific capacity limits that apply to any network resource. Thus, the modus operandi of malicious actors consists of sending several requests to the attacked web resource, until they manage to overwhelm the ability to manage requests and, in this way, prevent the site from functioning properly. That is, they direct a lot of traffic until they saturate the capacity and leave the attacked page without service.

The organization indicated last Monday, through a post on X (former Twitter)which was experiencing a DDoS attack, and that the most services were not available. Likewise, he explained that they were working on it, in order to implement a solution.

In another post shared on tuesdaythe digital library noted that continued to experience interruptions in service due to this attack by unknown malicious actors. Now, the organization continues to try to stabilize its service by strengthening defenses.

In this sense, as explained by Internet Archive in a statement on his blogsince the attacks began, the DDoS intrusion has launched “tens of thousands of false information requests per second.”

This has caused access to the website and the Wayback Machine tool to be affected, preventing users from using it regularly. However, the digital library staff ensures that the file collections collected by this service “are safe” and have not been damaged by the cyber attack.

Thus, as the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, has shared, they are strengthening the service’s defenses to “provide more reliable access” to the library. Likewise, he has stated that the attack “has been sustained, shocking, targeted, adaptable and, most importantly, cruel.”

In addition to all this, the organization has warned that the Cyberattacks are increasingly frequent against libraries and other knowledge institutionsand has made reference to recent victims of malicious actors such as the British Library (United Kingdom) and the Natural History Museum in Berlin (Germany).

Internet Archive has not identified the source of the cyber attacksHowever, Kahle has also made reference to the fact that, in addition to the wave of cyberattacks, the organization It is also being sued by the United States publishing and recording industry associations.which allege copyright infringement.

Along these lines, he has pointed out that these associations are trying to “destroy this library completely”, as well as hindering all libraries “everywhere”. “Just as we resisted the DDoS attack, we appreciate all the support in pushing back against this unfair litigation against our library and others,” Kahle said.