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Thursday, October 24, 2024

Still Partly Down (but sometimes partly up) - Part 2


The plan for the Internet Archive - which has been down for some time due to a cyberattack - was to bring it back initially as a read-only site and gradually restore full functionality. That has now been done, although it seems to be a sometimes available/sometimes not affair. Some elements, notably the Wayback Machine that shows the internet at different dates in the past, are fully functioning. Links on this blog to the Internet Archive should now be available during the periods when the service is partially up, although you may find the built-in player doesn't operate. If that happens, directions are at the bottom of this post. Apparently, however, there are still other problems.

From reporter Wes Davis at The Verge:

...I received an email from “The Internet Archive Team,” replying to a message I’d sent on October 9th. Except its author doesn’t seem to have been the digital archivists’ support team — it was apparently written by the hackers who breached the site earlier this month and who evidently maintain some level of access to its systems. I’m not alone. Users on the Internet Archive subreddit are reporting getting the replies, as well. Here is the message I received:

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. As demonstrated by this message, this includes a Zendesk token with perms to access 800K+ support tickets sent to info@archive.org since 2018. 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. Here’s hoping that they’ll get their shit together now.

The Verge left a voicemail at the Archive’s contact number asking for more information...

Full story at https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/20/24274826/internet-archive-hackers-replying-zendesk-tickets.

As blog readers will know, we store recordings and other information for this blog on the Internet Archive. As noted above, with the Internet Archive restored on a read-only basis, those links will again function. In the meantime, we are keeping files that would normally have been uploaded and will do so when service is again available for updating.

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There is also this item posted on the Internet Archive X (Twitter) website:

Source: https://x.com/internetarchive/status/1847722948557255144.

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Directions if the player or reader doesn't work during periods when the Internet Archive is available as a read-only service:

Go to the options for download section of the website. Select the mp3 file for audio recordings or the mp4 file for video recordings that corresponds to what you are looking for. Click on those files and you should be able to play them. If it is a text file, in the options for downloading select the pdf that corresponds to what you are looking for and click on it. If you have trouble finding mp3, mp4, or pdf files, the "show all" option should display them.

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