The Internet Archive, the non-profit digital library known for its Wayback Machine, has suffered another significant cyberattack that compromised its users' personal data.
Hackers claim to have obtained access to over 800,000 support tickets and have sent emails to individuals who have interacted with the organization since 2018.
"It's dispiriting to see that even after being made aware of the breach 2 weeks ago, IA has still not done the due diligence of rotating many of the API keys that were exposed in their gitlab secrets," read the email sent out on Sunday.
The hackers went on to explain that they had taken over the Internet Archive's Zendesk customer service platform with the ability to see tickets or information requests dating back six years.
"Whether you were trying to ask a general question, or requesting the removal of your site from the Wayback Machine—your data is now in the hands of some random guy. If not me, it'd be someone else," added the hackers.
Newsweek reached out to the Internet Archive for comment via X.
One day earlier, an Internet Archive staff member took to Reddit to address the initial hack. They emphasized the team's efforts to secure the site and restore services.
"The teams have getting the site back secure and safe as the number one priority. They have taken no days off this past week. They are taking none this weekend," the staff member wrote. "I spent today talking with tired and thoughtful people putting their all in."
"The vast amount of our patrons understand the situation. A few do not and seem to think we are not doing this work literally round the clock. I spent today talking with tired and thoughtful people putting their all in," they added.
Security analysts expressed concern over the severity of the breach in October when the first large-scale hack was exposed, and DDoS attacks took the site offline.
Jason Meller, VP of Product at 1Password, told Newsweek at the time: "Based on publicly available evidence, the site has been thoroughly compromised. Given the severity of this breach and until they have had time to fully investigate, my strong recommendation is to avoid browsing or using any files obtained from the site until they have declared an 'all clear.'"
The DDoS attack was claimed by a self-described pro-Palestinian group known as SN_BlackMeta (also BlackMeta or DarkMeta). While the group took credit for the DDoS attack, they have not claimed this latest Zendesk data breach, which may have been conducted by a different threat actor.
The Internet Archive is a crucial resource for historians, researchers, and the general public, preserving billions of web pages and digital content. The breach not only compromises user data but also raises concerns about the security of valuable historical records.
Dorian Sherman, founder of the decentralized digital archiving platform Project Dara, posted online, "This IA (Internet Archive) outage is seemingly getting worse and worse, day by day. KSF (Knowledge Standards Foundation) and DARA were founded in part to mitigate such catastrophic data loss of centrally stored archives but we are not yet in a position to help at scale."
"I certainly hope we are not too late. As I say I'm very concerned about all this and have a very bad feeling," he added.
Sherman suggested that not only was the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine website not working right now, but that some of the archive may have been deleted.
"Evidence of DISAPPEARING ARCHIVES: Below 4 yrs of @X Twitter blog GONE," he said, sharing a screenshot of the Wayback Machine's archive page for the official X/Twitter blog.
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