Multi-day DDoS storm batters Internet Archive
Multi-day DDoS storm batters Internet Archive
www.theregister.com
Three-day DDoS attack batters the Internet Archive
33 comments
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I'm checking the Xitter page of the alleged source of the attacks, SN_Blackmeta. But what caught my attention the most was another message. And overall the account.
- Their group was formed in April 2024. It's an extremely new group.
- Their targets overall seem too "random".
- They're using Xitter dammit. Do they not care about their own security?
- Whoever wrote the English version of the text speaks Dutch or German. Probably Dutch, as their spelling corrector is "fixing" words like "beginning" into "beginnen", "witne[ssed]" to "witten[seed]", etc.
- Don't trust me on what I'm going to say as I don't speak Russian, but there's also something off with their Russian version of the text. Typically Russian doesn't use a comma after time expressions like "в этот день" (on this day); you could argue that it's there due to that parenthetical expression (7 апреля 2024 года), but even its presence feels off. Also the fact that they spelled out "года" instead of just "г.".
If I had to take some bets: the group is from Western Europe, not Russia or any country where Arabic is the dominant language. They're likely skript kiddos trying to take the "glory" of attacks conducted by someone else; if they aren't, my second guess would be that they're doing it just to call attention to themselves ("look ma! I'm a haxor!!! I'm so cool!! X-D" style).
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Someone pointed out in another thread that it would make a lot of sense that this attack was for clout/reputation on the darkweb as a high profile advertisement for their DDOS business.
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"DDOS business"
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"So what do you do for a living?"
"Oh I'm just a massive piece of shit, I own a business that ruins things for people."
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So instead of "look ma, I'm cool", it's "look potential hirer, I'm profitable!".
Then it makes sense why they'd translate their stuff in EN/RU/AR even being potentially not speakers of any of them - because their hirers might.
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Who do I crowdfund to DDoS the DDoS'ers?
The Internet Archive, and by extension the Wayback Machine, are integral to Internet democracy and accountability. We can't lose that.
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Eugh I'm overdue donating to them. I've done Wikipedia as I use it way more but this site is important and I think it's time.
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Also Wikipedia is very well funded, there are a lot of smaller projects running on shoestring budgets
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Honestly, I don't care. At this point, looking at the smoking hellscape the internet has become, looking at what happened to wikia, I don't care if they're getting funded or not, I'm donating. Wikipedia and the Internet Archive are some of that last bastions of the internet the way it was meant to be. We simply can't lose them the way we've lost so many others.
It's really to curb my own anxiety more than anything else. It's the only thing I can do to reinforce the bulwark, and I'm gonna do it, because I can rest a little bit easier knowing that bulwark is a little bit stronger.
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Eugh
What is does that mean? Is that an expression of frustration like "ugh" or "argh"?
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Charlie Brown would say "AAUGH!"
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correct
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Let's use this as a catalyst to support them and similar projects. I'll be donating a chunk of money to them and also to the Wikimedia foundation and other related FOSS projects.
If you are able to donate, please do! If we all do our small part, we can make a big difference.
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And now two of the websites I have an overwhelming reliance on are basically facing the threat of potentially disappearing for good. Now I have another thing to donate to.
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Soulseek has been getting hammered too
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Well whatever this is about needs to be Streisanded. Find out who is responsible and why, and then make it a household name.
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An anonymous gang calling itself SN_Blackmeta, which seems to be against US and Israeli interests and writes in English, Russian, and Arabic, has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attacks for reasons unknown. We'll take it with a grain of salt, and have put it to the Internet Archive for comment.
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IT'S OFFICIALY OKAY TO DOXX SN_BLACKMETA.
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
While the San Francisco institution has assured users that its collections and web archives are safe — that's the good news — it warns service remains spotty for the online library and its Wayback Machine.
Since the flood of phony network traffic began, attackers have launched "tens of thousands of fake information requests per second," according to Chris Freeland, director of library services at Archive.
And while the traffic tsunami has been "sustained, impactful, targeted, adaptive, and importantly, mean," it's not the biggest threat to the site, according to Brewster Kahle, founder and digital librarian of the Archive.
Kahle founded the nonprofit service – which provides free access to tons of digitized materials, from software and music to scans of print books — in 1996.
The Internet Archive is right now fighting legal battles against major US book publishing companies and record labels, which have charged the site with copyright infringement and are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
An anonymous gang calling itself SN_Blackmeta, which seems to be against US and Israeli interests and writes in English, Russian, and Arabic, has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attacks for reasons unknown.
The original article contains 495 words, the summary contains 193 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
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Monolithic Archive systems like Internet Archive are cool, but we really should be pushing for better localized infrastructure usage for this kind of archiving, IMO.
That's another potential defederated API to build out. I doubt it will end up developed, since most opensource devs are already busy on other projects.
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33 comments
Man, the internet archive is one of the good sites that's not a puke gobbling corporate, can we direct attacks to someone worthy of the heat instead?
This is not the timeline where we get to have nice things. This is the timeline where meta and xitter exist, billionaires rule, and teeth are just viewed as luxury bones.
And where psychotherapy is a thing that the ones who need it often can't afford.
Would be nice if we could reroute traffic to somewhere else.
Technically you probably could. But it might be frowned upon to be complicit in a DDoS attack.