Internet Archive reels from catastrophic cyberattack, data breach [Video]

The Internet Archive, an online repository of web pages, was offline Thursday after its founder confirmed a major cyberattack that exposed the data of millions of users and left the site defaced.

The assault on the San Francisco-based nonprofit, claimed by a shadowy group that experts described as a pro-Palestinian “hacktivist,” lays bare the perils of cybersecurity breaches ahead of the November 5 US presidential election.

Brewster Kahle, the Internet Archive’s founder and digital librarian, acknowledged a series of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks — aimed at disrupting a website or server — since Tuesday and said the organization was working to upgrade security.

The assault led to the “defacement of our website” and a breach of usernames, emails and passwords, Kahle wrote on X, formerly Twitter, late Wednesday.

In a new post early Thursday, Kahle said the attackers had returned, knocking down both the Internet Archive’s main site and its …