Internet Archive hit by 'catastrophic' hack private user data of millions now exposed

The Internet Archive has experienced a massive data breach that has exposed tens of millions of user account details such as email addresses and passwords.

Internet Archive hit by 'catastrophic' hack private user data of millions now exposed
Comment IconFacebook IconX IconReddit Icon
Tech and Science Editor
Published
1 minute & 30 seconds read time

The Internet Archive was hit with a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) Attack on Wednesday afternoon, resulting in the service being knocked offline on Thursday.

Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian of the Internet Archive, confirmed the platform experienced a major outage due to DDoS attacks, which resulted in the "defacement of our website" and a major breach that exposed 31 million user accounts. The breach exposed the usernames, emails, and bcrypt password hashes of 31,081,179 archive users, with Kahle confirming the news in a new X post that stated the Internet Archive suffered from "defacement of our website via JS library; breach of usernames/email/salted-encrypted passwords."

As for the defacement Kahle referenced, the hacker/s injected this message into the platform, "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 HIBP!" HIBP is a reference to the website "Have I Been Pwned," which informs users if their account details have been leaked online due to a data breach. Moreover, HIBP did confirm the Internet Archive data breach, writing that 31 million records from Internet Archive users were stolen.

The Australian reports the hacker group known as "SN_BLACKMETA" claimed responsibility for the attack in an X post.

"The Internet Archive has and is suffering from a devastating attack," the group wrote on the platform Wednesday. "They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of 'Israel.'"

According to Radware, a cybersecurity solutions provider, SN_BLACKMETA is a "pro-Palestinian hacktivist with potential ties to Sudan".

Photo of the MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super 16G Ventus 3X
Best Deals: MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti Super 16G Ventus 3X
Country flag Today 7 days ago 30 days ago
- -
Buy
$1499 USD $1198.98 USD
Buy
- -
Buy
$644.99 CAD -
Buy
£979 -
Buy
- -
Buy
* Prices last scanned on 2/6/2025 at 3:29 am CST - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

Tech and Science Editor

Email IconX IconLinkedIn Icon

Jak joined the TweakTown team in 2017 and has since reviewed 100s of new tech products and kept us informed daily on the latest science, space, and artificial intelligence news. Jak's love for science, space, and technology, and, more specifically, PC gaming, began at 10 years old. It was the day his dad showed him how to play Age of Empires on an old Compaq PC. Ever since that day, Jak fell in love with games and the progression of the technology industry in all its forms.

Related Topics

Newsletter Subscription