Internet Archive breached again through stolen access tokens

Does anyone know who is targeting the Internet Archive, and why? I get the impression the attacks are too sophisticated for it to just be vandal punks.

Is it sophisticated if IA leaves the door wide open? I blame shit leadership.

> I get the impression the attacks are too sophisticated for it to just be vandal punks.

What gives that impression? Everything I've seen about the attacker's messaging says "vandal punk(s)" to me, and nothing in what I've seen of the IA's systems screams Fort Knox. It wouldn't surprise me if they actually had a pretty lax approach to security on the assumption that there's very little reason to target them.

It strikes me as reasonable to assume (or at least strongly bet on) -- I'm not sure of the right phrase for it -- but like a mercenary type operation on behalf of some larger old media company?

There's just too much "means, motive and opportunity" there.

The group that claimed to be responsible for the first hack was said to be Russian-based, anti-U.S., pro-Palestine, and their reasoning for the attack was because of IA's violation of copyright....

I think you should draw your own more informed conclusions, but it smells a lot like feds to me.

With the amount of comments calling for a leadership change my tinfoilhat theory is that this is a concerted effort to get a leadership change.

What do Palestine, Russia, and the U.S. have to do with the Internet Archive? The Internet Archive is a supremely boring target politically.

That's the point they're making. It's such a seeming non-sequitur that people are suspicious and coming up with fun theories.

I get the impression it's just pissing into the salt shaker. Internet Archive is obviously held together by duct tape (okay, okay, strong and durable duct tape) and personal willpower. Moreover, its main mission is spreading data, not hiding it from others to generate revenue.

Those who don't get the salt shaker bit, here's the original of the ancient wisdom:

https://web.archive.org/web/20060619131835/http://xelios.liv...

Choose any translation:

https://malaya-zemlya.livejournal.com/697779.html

https://personal-view.com/talks/discussion/25915/humor-hacke...

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hacker-restaurant-alexander-s...

He's pointing out that it doesn't make any sense: why would someone pro-Russian and anti-US care about violating western IP? In reality, it's the opposite: Russia is happy to help with that because they think it helps weaken the west.

> The Internet Archive is a supremely boring target politically.

I mean it's where we go to prove a politician said something after they deleted it or where a government changes the wording of something...

I'd argue it's one of the juicer political targets if you're actually wanting to do something.

>supremely boring target politically.

Oh how wrong you are.

There is nothing boring in a target that can be used to validate others' lies and potential hypocrisy, changes in their policies etc.

The wayback machine itself serves as a truly priceless way to go back through someone's public life.

It seems plausible to me that someone is just trying to exacerbate political/social conflict. Russia has been known to do such things, and they often take multiple sides just to sow chaos. Self-identifying as Palestinian activists would be an effective way to get more people mad that otherwise wouldn't care.

This is also right before a major U.S. election, and that might not be a coincidence. Someone might be trying to get Trump elected by drawing attention to the Israel-Gaza conflict, a topic that isn't exactly a winning issue for Harris.

That's just one possibility of many though. I mean, might just be regular assholes that happen to also be pro-Palestinian. Or pro-Hamas, which isn't necessarily the same thing.

The people who DDoSed Internet Archive never claimed to be behind the breach. That was some media companies who misreported this.

The breach happened over a week before the DDoS attack, according to Troy Hunt.

Stop looking for conspiracy theories.

Nothing sophisticated about this attack.