The Internet Archive, a non-profit digital library, was hit by a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on Monday, May 29, 2023. The attack made most of the organization’s services temporarily unavailable, although the data remained unaffected. The Internet Archive confirmed the attack on its Twitter account, stating, “Archive.org is under a DDoS attack. The data is not affected, but most services are unavailable.”
The attack began over the Memorial Day long weekend, with users reporting difficulties accessing the site for several hours on Monday. The organization mentioned that there was some “back and forth with the attackers” and that they had made changes to their service to mitigate the impact. Despite the Internet Archive announcing that its services were back up and running Monday afternoon, multiple users on social media indicated that the site still wasn’t working for them.
DDoS disrupts internet archive services
On Tuesday morning, the non-profit confirmed that the DDoS attacks had resumed. Internet Archive founder and board chair Brewster Kahle noted that the issues on Sunday could have been due to an “over-aggressive crawling group” or a DDoS attack, adding that the site tends to face more technical issues on weekends. The Internet Archive, founded in San Francisco in 1996, has faced various challenges in recent years, including lawsuits from major US book publishers and music companies over alleged copyright infringement. The organization has continued to assert that its digital lending program and music archives constitute fair use. The motives behind the DDoS attack remain unclear, and the Internet Archive has not shared further details on the identity of the attackers. The incident highlights the ongoing vulnerability of online platforms to cyberattacks, even for well-established digital repositories like the Internet Archive.
