Internet Archive breach exposes data of millions of users
The Internet Archive is a project that collects archived versions of web pages. Its service has fallen victim to hackers, leading to the leak of data belonging to tens of millions of registered users, including their email addresses.
"Internet Archive services are temporarily offline. Please check our official accounts, including Twitter/X, Bluesky or Mastodon for the latest information. We apologize for the inconvenience," reads the message currently displayed to visitors of the Internet Archive website.
The Internet Archive, a non-profit organization, was established in 1996 by programmer Brewster Kahle. One of its most notable "products" is the "Wayback Machine," which allows users to see how websites appeared and what they contained in the past. It also stores copies of images and books, serving as a comprehensive "internet archive." Its resources include 700 billion different types of internet content.
Internet users' data leaked online
According to Bleeping Computer, the first to report the hacking attack, the user data leak happened at the end of September. Hackers released a file approximately 6.4 gigabytes in size online, containing data of registered users. Included are email addresses, passwords encrypted with Bcrypt, screen names, and other internal data.
The service writes that it's unknown how the threat actors broke into the Internet Archive or whether any other data was stolen.
Additionally, a few days ago, the Internet Archive was victimized by another hacker attack. This time it was a DDoS attack (a cyberattack involving multiple computers targeting a website simultaneously), reportedly carried out by the group BlackMeta.
"While the Internet Archive is facing both a data breach and DDoS attacks at the same, it is not believed that the two attacks are connected," emphasizes Bleeping Computer.
