Following a wave of disruptive DDoS attacks that took out the Wayback Machine in early October, the Internet Archive is steadily restoring its services. On Monday, the nonprofit digital library confirmed that ‘Save Page Now,’ a tool for archiving web pages, is once again available on the Wayback Machine.
The Machine finds its Wayback
The online data archiving service has slowly powered itself up following crippling system attacks in October. The announcement of the restoration of the ‘Save Page Now’ feature is a significant contribution towards bringing the Archive back to full functionality. Although the Wayback Machine resumed in read-only mode on 14 October, it began archiving pages uploaded since 9 October when the initial outage forced the site offline. This update means users can now upload and save new web pages to ensure continued access despite censorship and network outages.
The timing of the DDoS attacks coincided with the Internet Archive’s disclosure of a separate data breach, compromising more than 31 million records. Security researcher Troy Hunt, who operates Have I Been Pwned?, a site for monitoring personal data leaks, commented that the attacks and data breach appeared to be unrelated events. Hunt suggested that these incidents were “entirely coincidental” and likely involved multiple parties rather than a single coordinated effort.
The Internet Archive continues to work on restoring its full range of services while addressing both the technical issues caused by the DDoS attacks and the security implications of the data breach. As recovery efforts proceed, the organisation says it remains focused on its mission to archive and provide access to billions of web pages, safeguarding historical digital content.
