The Internet Archive has returned to read-only mode after a hacker attack on October 09, 2024. The cyberattack disabled the digital library and the Wayback Machine website archiving service. In addition, the attackers stole a database of 31 million users. This was reported by The Verge.
According to the founder of the Internet Archive, Brewster Kahle, it is now back in "temporary read-only" mode. The service is safe, but may require further maintenance. In this case, the service will be suspended again.
The @internetarchive’s Wayback Machine resumed in a provisional, read-only manner.
— Brewster Kahle (@brewster_kahle) October 14, 2024
Sorry, no Save Page Now yet.
Safe to resume but might need further maintenance, in which case it will be suspended again.
Please be gentle https://t.co/sb5tlvxQ26
More as it happens.
The Wayback Machine has restored access to all 916 billion archived web pages, but does not yet allow creating new copies.
Last week, users of the Internet Archive received a message that the archive had suffered a "catastrophic security breach" with a link to the Have I Been Pwned website, which confirmed the data theft.
The stolen data included email addresses, usernames, hashed passwords, and other internal data of 31 million unique email accounts.