(Washington) The Internet Archive site, which functions as a digital library, is no longer accessible Thursday after its founder announced a major cyberattack which resulted in a data leak concerning potentially millions of users.
Brewster Kahle explained on X that he was working to restore service to the site he co-founded in 1996 and improve its security.
Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that brings together researchers and academics and whose tools are widely used by fact-checkers around the world.
A DDoS attack “by denial of service”, that is to say which consists of bringing down a system by overwhelming it with requests, “damaged our site” and exposed personal data (user name, email address and password) of users, he wrote Wednesday evening.
He added on Thursday that hackers had made the main site and its “Open Library”, a digital catalog of books published around the world, inaccessible, specifying that the priority was to protect user data before restoring the service.
Users reported Wednesday that they were greeted on the site by a window with an ironic message from hackers, announcing the hacking of the data of 31 million users.
The HIBP site, which lets you know if a user’s data has been hacked, confirmed this figure on X.
Brewster Kahle did not immediately respond to AFP’s requests but indicated on X that other details would be given gradually.
The Internet Archive’s best-known feature is the “Wayback Machine”, which allows web pages to be saved as non-editable archives.
Internet Archive thus keeps copies of millions of web pages on its servers, archived automatically or via user requests. These copies, freely accessible online, remain regardless of modifications made to the archived web pages and even in the event of deletion.
The Wayback Machine, like other archiving sites, is therefore an essential element for fact-checkers who use it to find traces of deleted publications and ensure that the evidence they use in their articles will always be visible to their readers. This can also help document changes made to certain content over time.