The Internet Archive has faced a barrage of cyberattacks

The Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library that has served as a main repository of internet history, is back online with limited functionality after weeks of being harassed by hackers.

The Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library that has served as a main repository of internet history, is back online with limited functionality after weeks of being harassed by hackers.

Brewster Kahle, the Archive’s founder, wrote on his social media channels Sunday night that services had resumed in a read-only mode and that new webpages can’t be saved yet.

“Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again. Please be gentle,” Kahle wrote.

The California-based Archive has run the Wayback Machine, devoted to preserving the internet as a historical and cultural artifact, since 1996. It has taken more than 150 billion snapshots of webpages and uploaded hundreds of thousands of movies, concert recordings, books and software programs.

For reasons that are not clear, the Archive has been the victim of at least three recent attacks: the theft of tens of millions of users’ usernames and email addresses; a brief defacement of the site; and repeatedly being knocked offline for days by overwhelming it with traffic, a tactic known as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/internet-archive-faced-barrage-cyberattacks-rcna175389

---