A hack this month on the world鈥檚 largest archive of the internet 鈥� is to provide 鈥渦niversal access to all knowledge鈥� 鈥� has compromised millions of users鈥� information and forced a temporary shutdown of its services.
The attack on the Internet Archive leaked identifying information from more than 31 million user accounts, including patron email addresses and encrypted passwords, according to the website Have I Been Pwnd, which tracks accounts that may be compromised in a data breach.
The Internet Archive, a nonprofit based in San Francisco that operates on a shoestring budget, provides free access to its enormous digitized library of websites current and past, software applications, and print materials. The organization said its vast cache of archival material 鈥渋s safe鈥� following the breach.
IA said that it took down the entire site temporarily to 鈥渁ccess and improve our security.鈥� By Friday, most of its services were back online, including its archive tool of websites, . The IA said that it was working 鈥渁round the clock鈥� and through the weekend to restore the rest of its services securely.
鈥淚n coming days more services will resume, some starting in read-only mode as full restoration will take more time,鈥� read a blog entry from IA founder .
News of the attack surfaced on Oct. 9, with visitors to archive.org sharing screenshots showing that the website鈥檚 JavaScript had been defaced with a message that the Internet Archive had been breached:
"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 [Have I Been Pwnd]," read the JavaScript alert that momentarily appeared on the site.
鈥淲e鈥檙e taking a cautious, deliberate approach to rebuild and strengthen our defenses. Our priority is ensuring the Internet Archive comes online stronger and more secure,鈥� Kahle said in his blog post.
He noted other recent cyberattacks on libraries 鈥� the , , , and .
鈥淲e hope these attacks are not indicative of a trend,鈥� he said.
In May, the Internet Archive saw its first attack since its founding in 1996, , and intermittent outages have followed.
Since , the Internet Archive has been dogged by lawsuits over its digitization of and . Kahle told the Post the costly fines from the lawsuits could amount to a death blow for the archive.
The nonprofit has yet to share further updates on the breach of sensitive information. NPR has reached out to the Internet Archive for more details about the attack and how its patrons were affected.
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