Turmoil has engulfed the Internet Archive, forced to rebuild one of most towering stacks of tech on the web after being toppled by hackers. Steven Vaughan-Nichols issues a plea: leave the Internet Archive alone!
The Internet Archive is a 501(c)(3) non-profit with a gross revenue in its most recent 990 filing of only $30.5 million. For the size of the job it's undertaken, it's grossly underfinanced.
Recently, though, adding insult to injury, the Archive has been subjected to one cyber-attack after another.The first major incident occurred Oct. 9-10 and involved two simultaneous attacks: First, hackers exploited a GitLab token, compromising the Archive's source code and stealing user data from 31 million accounts. Concurrently, a pro-Palestinian group called SN BlackMeta launched a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack, temporarily knocking the site — and the Wayback Machine — offline.
Blackmeta said it hit the site because it belongs to the United States, which supports Israel in the ongoing Palestine-Israel conflict. Uhm, no, no it doesn't. The only cause the Internet Archive espouses is freedom of information, and it has no connection with the US government.
One thing I'd add is that it's easy to overestimate the sincerity of hackers' motives. That putatively pro-Palestinian activist group is blatantly some Russian lads. Justification flows from opportunity. One finds an exploit, then one dresses it in whatever narrative might morally justify hitting it. This is why the justifications are often so unbelievably hare-brained, as in this case. But the ego involved is large, and so once landed on a justification will be elaborated and defended to the point of indignity.
