UPDATE: Oct. 24, 2024, 9:52 a.m. PDT This article has been updated to reflect that the full archive appears to be back up.
The full Internet Archive is back online — not just the Wayback machine, but the massive collection of media including music, documents, and movies. As of this update, the video player was glitchy, but in Mashable’s tests, seemingly all files in the archive were once again available.
Yes, the world once again has access to mountains of digitized VHS tapes, .pdfs of old magazines, and countless other priceless treasures.
Just a day after the Internet Archive posted the restoration of its Wayback Machine and other services on its blog, the site went dark again. As of original publication of this article, a visit to the Archive’s homepage showed a message confirming that while Archive-It and its blog were back online, but the rest of the Internet Archive’s services were unavailable. That has since changed, and the full archive is back up.
Multiple outages made for a series of frustrating setbacks for users who rely on the digital library’s vast resources, though details on who has caused this new disruption are still unclear. At original publication, it appeared that this was the fourth—yes, fourth—cyberattack on the Internet Archive since the beginning of October.
The first breach, on Oct. 9, saw two separate groups of hackers compromise the personal data of 31 million users, including emails, screen names, and encrypted passwords. Following that, a second and third attack targeted the Archive’s Zendesk support system— with the hackers even responding to support requests sent to IA.
The timing of these attacks on the Internet Archive—and other online book repositories like the British and Toronto public libraries—couldn’t be worse. With the Internet Archive having already lost legal battles with publishing giants like Hachette, HarperCollins, and Penguin Random House, these cyberattacks only add to the chaos.
This article will be updated as more information is gathered.
Topics Cybersecurity
Currently residing in Chicago, Illinois, Chance Townsend is the General Assignments Editor at Mashable covering tech, video games, dating apps, digital culture, and whatever else comes his way. He has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of North Texas and is a proud orange cat father. His writing has also appeared in PC Mag and Mother Jones.
In his free time, he cooks, loves to sleep, and finds great enjoyment in Detroit sports. If you have any stories, tips, recipes, or wanna talk shop about the Lions/Tigers/Pistons/Red Wings you can reach him at [email protected]
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