2024 Internet Archive Hack
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Overview
The 2024 Internet Archive Hack took place between October 9th and October 11th, with the site suffering a data breach that compromised over 31 million users, as well as a DDoS attack that brought down Archive.org and Openlibrary.org. A "hacktivist" group that goes by BlackMeta on X claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack, claiming to be motivated by the Internet Archive's supposed connection to the U.S. government and by extension the government of Israel. Several internet users remained skeptical of this reasoning, given that the Internet Archive is a non-profit organization neither owned by the U.S. government nor claims to contribute to the Zionist project.
Background
On October 8th, 2024, Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle made a post on X noting that the site was under a DDoS attack.[1]
Later that day, Internet Archive users reported a JavaScript pop-up message claiming that the site had been hacked and that 31 million user accounts had been compromised. The message read, "Have you ever felt like the Internet Archive runs on sticks and is constantly on the verge of suffering a catastrophic security breach? It just happened. See 31 million of you on HIBP!," where HIBP refers to the site "Have I Been Pwned?"[2]
Have I Been Pwned founder Troy Hunt confirmed the data breach, telling cybersecurity news site Bleeping Computer[3] that the hackers had shared the Internet Archives authentication database with his site, including "email addresses, screen names, password change timestamps, Bcrypt-hashed passwords, and other internal data."
News of the hack was shared on /r/technology[6] by /u/MayankWL on October 9th, 2024, where it gathered over 11,000 upvotes in a day. The JavaScript message was shared on /r/PCMasterrace[7] on October 9th as well, where Redditor /u/MrJWST gathered over 5,000 upvotes in a day.
Several X accounts posted about the hack on October 9th, 2024, including @LostMediaBuster[8] and @vxunderground,[9] the latter of which was mistakenly blamed for the hack.
Developments
On October 9th, 2024, X[4] account @Sn_darkmeta A.K.A. BlackMeta made a series of posts claiming responsibility for the DDoS attack on the Internet Archive, writing, "[The Internet Archive is] under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of “Israel”."
When pressed on the services Internet Archive provides for countries like Lebanon and Palestine, the account[5] wrote, "They need peace not ….internet archive."
Online Reactions
Several internet users condemned the DDoS attack on the Internet Archive, with X[10] user @tgzerosugar gathering over 100,000 likes on an October 9th, 2024 post that read, "Internet Archive is seriously one of those sites that we shouldn’t be trying to hack or take down."
Also on October 9th, X[11] user @PineappleCarl3 quoted the hacker group BlackMeta's post with a meme calling them a federal agent, gathering over 61,000 likes in two days.
On October 10th, X[12] account @vxunderground noted that their post about the DDoS attack on Internet Archive had been mistaken for them claiming responsibility for the attack, gathering over 6,000 likes in a day.
Search Interest
Unavailable.
External References
[1] X – brewster_kahle
[2] Bleeping Computer – Internet Archive Hack
[3] Bleeping Computer – Internet Archive Hack
[4] X – Sn_darkmeta
[5] X – Sn_darkmeta
[6] Reddit – /r/technology
[7] Reddit – /r/pcmasterrace
[8] X – LostMediaBuster
[9] X – vxunderground
[10] X – tgzerosugar
[11] X – PineappleCarl3
[12] X – vxunderground
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