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The Internet Archive is under attack, with a popup claiming a ‘catastrophic’ breach
(www.theverge.com)
Of all the places to do this to, why The Archive?
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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with as long as this has been going on it really surprises me that nothing has come out as a motive. it seems kind of pointless to do this sort of thing and not make your intentions known
maybe it's a government or organization upset that they are keeping archives of things they don't like
Apparently, from a different article, the hackers did it because 'america bad'.
Which is fine as a message I guess, but picking this website is dumb.
The hacktivist group SN_BLACKMETA has claimed responsibility and cites US support of Israel as the motivation.
That's extremely stupid. that doesn't even make sense
No way they aren't trolling
This isn't the first time this group has done something like this and they seem to have been pretty consistent in their messaging.
https://bsky.app/profile/archive.org/post/3l67dtwvulp23
“Update: @internetarchive’s data has not been corrupted. Services are currently stopped to upgrade internal systems.
We are working to restore services as quickly and safely as possible.
Sorry for this disruption.”
Alright who has the donate link so I can help them out.
https://archive.org/donate This would be it if it were up and running. I wonder if there's any other avenues?
I recently went through most of my accounts and randomized the username, with the thought here being to limit the likelihood of one site being compromised leading to accounts at other sites being compromised. I don't have to remember them due to using a password manager, so it's really no skin off my nose.
I'll use this as a reminder to everyone to improve your security. Some ideas:
- use a password manager and use random usernames and passwords
- have multiple email accounts, and don't use your "main" email w/ random signups - I use a simple mnemonic, like "-@domain.com"; so "[email protected]" or "[email protected]" so it's easy for me to remember, but unlikely for a lazy hacker to pwn other accounts (a lot of these are automated); my real email is "[email protected]"
- use 2FA if offered, even if it's stupid SMS or email based; having any extra step can deter an attacker
Sucks that people are targeting IA, I hope there isn't any lasting damage and that this is a simple defacement/DOS.
For e-mails, you can just get firefox relay with your own subdomain and generate infinite e-mail masks for 1$ a month. I usually take "[email protected]" for example. It's pretty great because you just make the masks on the fly.
I've been doing this for several years now (not specifically that service, since I have my own domains). It's really nice knowing exactly who sold your email to the spam bots, because it's right in the address. Super easy to block once that happens.
addy.io is another service which I'm using with my own domain. I know there exists a third, but I can't remember the name.
Yeah, I bought some Chinese batteries a while ago and they sold/leaked my info to a dozen other scam companies. None of which I was able to unsubscribe from. Just ticked a box to disable the email and that was the end of that. If I hadn't, they would have been blowing up my inbox for the rest of eternity with no way to stop it or know where it came from.
Yup.
If you use the same email everywhere, they can try brute-forcing the password by using the email instead of your username. Give them less to go on. $1/month is absolutely worth it to prevent an important account from getting hacked.
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Point 2... if you pay for a email aliasing service, you will be locked in. What I suggest is using plus addressing. e.g.
[email protected]
As long as you keep using randomized ones, this'll be as good as an alias against automated and manual login attempts. It just does not hide your base email, which would be
[email protected]
Many email services offer some free aliases. For example, I use one alias, along with my main email that is only used for important services. Other than that, I have an alias that is used for online accounts. This way, your main inbox is free of spammers. And even if your main address were to be the target of a spammer, the automatic spamming software most likely will not chop off the plus part, so you can easily block that email with the specific plus identifier. Not as good as external email aliasing services, but at least you won't be locked into the email aliasing service. Bitwarden has a generator for such things, really nice tbh.
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I was wondering why I hadn't been able to access Internet Archive yesterday... Who would take down what is the digital equivalent to the Library of Alexandria? I can only imagine some really childish people who have nothing better to do with their lives. I hope that the website can recover from the attack soon! 🙏
Who would take down what is the digital equivalent to the Library of Alexandria?
I can think of a few possibilities
1: peddlers of misinformation
2: people who love the poorly educated and want the misdeeds of their political allies to be forgotten.
3: copyright trolls.
Can't figure out if this is a joke or serious, so just in case, you might want to look up what happened to the Library of Alexandria.
Oh I already know about that. The Internet Archive has been dubbed the digital equivalent of the Library of Alexandria before, due to its size, similar purpose, and significance. My comparison was for that reason.
I used a 64 charcters unique password, so i don't think the bcrypt hash of it would be of any use for them.
I take it you've never had to log into a printer with an AD account before?
Yeah, I went out to 32 characters once. Until I needed to work on a printer.
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State actors? Maybe.
It's a bit tinhatty, though I'm betting on something akin to corporate espionage pointed at the Internet Archive.
Could just be a 14 year old kid with a bit of talent too. Wouldn't be the first time.
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