The Internet Archive website is back online in read-only mode after being hit by a cyberattack that disabled the digital library and Wayback Machine service last week. The attack, which involved a data breach and DDoS assault, caused the site to go offline on October 9 and stole a user authentication database containing 31 million unique records in recent weeks.
According to site founder Brewster Kahle, Internet Archive is now back in operation “temporarily in read-only mode.” He noted that it is safe to resume operations, but the site may require further maintenance, potentially leading to another shutdown.
Users can now access the Wayback Machine to search 916 billion archived web pages, but they are currently unable to submit new web pages to the archive. Kahle and his team are gradually restoring Archive.org services, including recovering team email accounts and library-specific crawling tools. Some services have been temporarily halted to allow Internet Archive staff to review and strengthen them against future attacks.
A popup window from one of the alleged intruders claimed that the archive suffered a “catastrophic security breach” last week, while Have I Been Pwned confirmed the data theft, which included stolen email addresses, usernames, encrypted passwords, and internal data related to 31 million unique email accounts.
Internet Archive’s service interruption comes just weeks after Google began adding links to archived web pages in the Wayback Machine. Google had temporarily removed links to its stored pages earlier in the year, so linking the Wayback Machine in Google search results is a useful way to access older versions of websites or archived pages.
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