The Internet Archive reportedly faced a denial-of-service (DDoS) attack this Memorial Day, according to the California-based nonprofit and several users who said they were unable to access the digital archive site for several hours on Monday.”Archive.org is under a DDoS attack,” the nonprofit’s X account wrote Monday morning. “The data is not affected, but most services are unavailable.” A few hours later, the nonprofit added that there was some “back and forth with the attackers.” The organization said it made some changes to its service, but has not yet shared further details on the identity of the attackers or any possible reason for the attack. PCMag has reached out to Internet Archive for comment.After Internet Archive shared that its services were back up and running Monday afternoon, multiple X users claimed the site still wasn’t working for them and may have experienced another outage or intermittent access issues.
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The archive site also reported network traffic issues on Sunday, so Monday’s DDoS attack may not have been an isolated incident. Internet Archive founder and board chair Brewster Kahle said 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. While other digital archive sites exist, many have domain extensions based outside of the US. Internet Archive was founded in San Francisco, California in 1996. Kahle has advocated for “universal access to all knowledge” via books, websites, and other types of media for decades.
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In addition to cyberattacks, the archival group has also faced a number of lawsuits in recent years. Major US book publishers sued the nonprofit in 2020 over Internet Archive’s digital book lending program, alleging copyright infringement. Last year, a judge ruled that the program violated the publishers’ copyrights. The nonprofit has continued to argue that “controlled digital lending” constitutes fair use, however. In 2023, Sony and Universal Music launched a lawsuit against Internet Archive over its music archives, alleging copyright infringement.
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