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The Internet Archive was hit by two major attack periods in 2024. An intermittent distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) campaign disrupted Archive.org and the Wayback Machine in late May. A broader October incident combined DDoS activity with website defacement and exposure of account data linked in reporting to about 31 million user records. The Archive said its stored collections remained safe, but that did not mean user account information was unaffected.
What happened to the Internet Archive?
In late May 2024, the Internet Archive reported that it was in the third day of an intermittent DDoS attack. Tens of thousands of fabricated requests per second overwhelmed services, causing recurring outages and unreliable Wayback access. The organization said its collections were safe. At that time, it described the Wayback Machine as preserving more than 866 billion web pages, a historical May 2024 figure rather than a current live count.
A separate and more serious attack period began in October. Archive.org went offline while reports described DDoS activity, a JavaScript defacement of the website, and disclosure that patron email addresses and encrypted passwords had been exposed. Have I Been Pwned data, as reported by WIRED and Recorded Future News, associated the exposure with approximately 31 million records. The available reporting does not establish that the DDoS and account-data exposure were carried out by the same actor.
May and October incidents compared
| Aspect | Late May 2024 | October 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Primary disruption | Intermittent DDoS requests caused recurring outages affecting Archive.org and Wayback access. | DDoS activity contributed to a broad shutdown during an incident that also involved website JavaScript defacement. |
| Duration and recovery | The Archive described the attack as ongoing for several days. | Services were offline for nearly a week, then returned in stages with restrictions. |
| Collection integrity | The Internet Archive said its collections were safe. | The Archive again said stored data was safe while it worked to resume services securely. |
| Account-data consequence | No user-data exposure was disclosed in the incident statement. | Reports described exposed email addresses and encrypted passwords associated with about 31 million records. |
| Attribution | No independently verified perpetrator was established. | SN_Blackmeta claimed the DDoS attacks; reporting did not independently verify the claim, motive, or responsibility for every part of the incident. |
How the services came back
- October 13–15: The Wayback Machine returned after nearly a week offline, initially with read-only or otherwise limited functionality.
- October 17–18: The Archive said Wayback, Archive-It, scanning, national-library crawls, email, its blog, helpdesk and social communications had resumed. Other contributor features were still being restored.
- November 14: Founder Brewster Kahle said services had returned in stages and that the organization was hardening systems because DDoS attacks were recurring. That later statement did not establish a new incident count or a verified attacker identity.
Staged restoration is normal after a major availability or security event: operators can bring read-only services online, monitor traffic, and then re-enable functions that accept uploads, edits or other changes.
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Was the Internet Archive hacked or DDoSed?
Both descriptions apply, but they describe different effects. A DDoS attack floods a service with traffic or requests so legitimate visitors cannot reliably reach it. It primarily damages availability; it does not, by itself, prove that files were copied or destroyed.
The October event also included a website defacement and a disclosed exposure of account information. Those are separate security consequences from the traffic flood. Saying that “the DDoS stole the passwords” incorrectly combines events that the public reporting has not shown to be one operation.
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The Internet Archive’s statements that collections or stored data were safe address the integrity of its preserved material. They are not a guarantee that every database containing user information was untouched.
Who attacked the Internet Archive?
SN_Blackmeta claimed responsibility for the DDoS attacks. That is an attribution claim, not an independently proven finding. The cited reports do not verify the group’s identity as the perpetrator, establish a motive, or demonstrate that it conducted the October website defacement and account-data breach. The most accurate wording is that SN_Blackmeta claimed the DDoS attacks.
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Was my Internet Archive password leaked?
Public reporting said email addresses and encrypted passwords were exposed in the October incident and linked the dataset to roughly 31 million records. “Encrypted” does not mean harmless: the practical risk depends on the password-hashing method, password strength and whether the same password was used elsewhere. The reported record total is not the same as the number of people actively using the Wayback Machine.
What to do if you had an account
- Change your Internet Archive password if you can access the account, using a long password that you have never used on another service.
- Change that password anywhere else it was reused. Attackers commonly test exposed credentials against email, shopping, social and workplace accounts.
- Use a password manager to create unique passwords and store them safely.
- Turn on multifactor authentication wherever the service offers it, especially for the email account tied to your Archive login.
- Be skeptical of messages claiming to restore your account or verify a donation. A breach can make convincing phishing emails easier to tailor, and the Archive’s legitimate emails will not need your existing password.
- Check a trusted breach-notification service, such as Have I Been Pwned, using the affected email address. Treat a match as a reason to change credentials, not as proof that an attacker can decrypt a particular password.
Is the Wayback Machine safe to use after the attacks?
The attacks did not mean that archived pages were destroyed. The Archive reported its stored collections safe and restored Wayback access after applying defensive changes. However, “safe” has two meanings here:
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- Availability: access can still be interrupted by future attacks, maintenance or protective rate limits. A page failing to load does not prove that its snapshot was deleted.
- Account security: anyone with an old, reused Archive password should treat it as exposed and replace it. Browsing public snapshots does not require you to reuse that password elsewhere.
When access is limited, try again later rather than repeatedly refreshing at high volume, which can worsen load during an incident. For research that must remain available, keep independent copies of legally usable source material and record the snapshot URL and capture date.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Why a DDoS can make the Wayback Machine appear “down”
The Wayback Machine serves enormous numbers of archived files through web servers, databases, caches and network links. A distributed attack uses many systems to send requests at once, consuming connection, processing or bandwidth capacity. Defensive firewalls and rate limits can then block suspicious traffic, but those controls may also restrict legitimate users or disable write functions while engineers investigate. That is why a service can return a limited, read-only interface before full search, capture and contributor features are available again.
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What the incidents mean for users and web preservation
The 2024 episodes show why availability, data integrity and account confidentiality must be evaluated separately. The Archive’s preserved collections were reported safe, yet the October incident still created a meaningful credential risk. Attribution also remains narrower than headlines sometimes suggest: a group’s public claim can identify what it says it did without proving who performed every action in a complex attack.
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