Internet Archive restores key services after major cyberattack disruptions

The Internet Archive has largely recovered from a series of severe cyberattacks earlier this month, with all major sites and services now back online. While a few minor features remain offline, reports indicate they are expected to be restored soon.

Chris Freeland, Director of Library Services at the Internet Archive, in an update to the blog, confirmed that key services are now back online, including the main archive page, the Wayback Machine, Open Library, Archive-It service, Vault, and the scholarly archive site. Most essential services are accessible once more, such as publicly available texts, TV news search and borrowing, audio files, moving images, institutional uploads, institutional web archiving, and API access.

"More services and features coming online soon," Freeland said in the blog post. "Services may be interrupted for ongoing maintenance. Thank you for your patience and ongoing support."

Best known for its Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive is a US-based nonprofit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle. Through its site, archive.org, it offers free access to an extensive digital library, which includes archived websites, software, music, audiovisual content, and print materials. The Archive is a widely used resource for academic research and data analysis.

Earlier this month, attackers reportedly accessed a user authentication database containing 31 million records. A group called SN-Blackmeta claimed responsibility for the DDoS attacks; however, the identity of the perpetrator behind the data breach remains unknown, and it’s unconfirmed if they are linked to the latest incidents.

The attackers claimed they had access to over 800,000 support tickets submitted to the Internet Archive since 2018.

On October 18, Brewster Kahle posted an update assuring that the Archive’s stored data is secure and that efforts to restore services safely are ongoing. Customer service platform Zendesk collaborated with the Internet Archive to address the breach, despite being unaffiliated with the source of the compromise.