Hacktivists Claim Responsibility For Taking Down the Internet Archive (gizmodo.com) 91
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: The Internet Archive and Wayback Machine went down on Tuesday following a sustained cyber attack. In addition, the Archive's user data has been compromised. If you've ever logged into the site to pore over its ample archives, it's time to change your passwords. [...] A pro-Palestenian hacktivist group called SN_BLACKMETA has taken responsibility for the hack on X and Telegram. "They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of 'Israel,'" the group said on X when someone asked them why they'd gone after the Archive.
The group elaborated on its reasoning in a now-deleted post on X. Jason Scott, an archivist at the Archive, screenshotted it and shared it. "Everyone calls this organization 'non-profit', but if its roots are truly in the United States, as we believe, then every 'free' service they offer bleeds millions of lives. Foreign nations are not carrying their values beyond their borders. Many petty children are crying in the comments and most of those comments are from a group of Zionist bots and fake accounts," the post said.
SN_BLACKMETA also claimed responsibility for a six-day DDoS attack on the Archive back in May. "Since the attacks began on Sunday, the DDoS intrusion has been launching tens of thousands of fake information requests per second. The source of the attack is unknown," Chris Freeland, Director of Library Services at the Archive said in a post about the attacks back in May. SN_BLACKMETA launched its Telegram channel on November 23 and has claimed responsibility for a number of other attacks including a six-day DDoS run at Arab financial institutions and various attacks on Israeli tech companies in the spring.
The group elaborated on its reasoning in a now-deleted post on X. Jason Scott, an archivist at the Archive, screenshotted it and shared it. "Everyone calls this organization 'non-profit', but if its roots are truly in the United States, as we believe, then every 'free' service they offer bleeds millions of lives. Foreign nations are not carrying their values beyond their borders. Many petty children are crying in the comments and most of those comments are from a group of Zionist bots and fake accounts," the post said.
SN_BLACKMETA also claimed responsibility for a six-day DDoS attack on the Archive back in May. "Since the attacks began on Sunday, the DDoS intrusion has been launching tens of thousands of fake information requests per second. The source of the attack is unknown," Chris Freeland, Director of Library Services at the Archive said in a post about the attacks back in May. SN_BLACKMETA launched its Telegram channel on November 23 and has claimed responsibility for a number of other attacks including a six-day DDoS run at Arab financial institutions and various attacks on Israeli tech companies in the spring.
Nice work (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, this is an attack you'd arrange specifically to discredit a group for doing it.
Archive.org is about as "American" a target as the red cross.
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I was wondering who the hell would be motivated to attack them, I guess it makes sense that it was just for the attention that could be gained by attacking something prominent. See also: activists gluing themselves to famous artworks or city main streets to bring attention to their cause.
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Not making friends or influencing anyone (Score:2)
Most interesting comment on the FP branch. Can't rule out the reverse spin angle but it depends on a credible claim of a connection between the bad actors and the people or causes to be discredited. Plus, it reeks of conspiracy or conspiratorial thinking.
However I also think it's the natural result of a vacuous FP from AC, so the question becomes "Why did you propagate the vacuous Subject?" Even if it is a cleverly crafted vacuous Subject, I believe the emptiness helps such Subjects spread so widely.
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I was wondering who the hell would be motivated to attack them
Any government, politician or corporation who doesn't wan't a permanent record of their public lies to be made available to the public.
Re:Nice work (Score:5, Interesting)
The picked the wrong target no doubt, but I'm hoping that something good comes of this in the end. Internet Archive has been a mess for a very long time, and they have been refusing offers of help from developers, refusing to open source the code. The documentation is terrible and a lot of what you need to know is not written down anywhere.
If it makes them re-think their attitude of not accepting help and gets them to make a real effort to improve their infrastructure, it would be a good thing. There are plenty of offers out there, but they seem to have this insular attitude where only people without the right skills who they know personally are allowed to be part of it.
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Really showing the world what you're all about. Archive.org is a fantastic service and it is not your enemy.
If I thought like them, I would support the complete destruction of the Palestinian people at this point since the 'hacktivists' claim to be part of the Palestinians.
What an absurd way to live. Being justified in your actions is not enough.
"Belongs to the USA" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's based in the USA, but it's a hard stretch to say it "belongs" to them. Maybe if the government created it, but they didn't. I don't even think the US government likes IA and the WM.
Many petty children are crying in the comments and most of those comments are from a group of Zionist bots and fake accounts
If these comments are mostly by bots and fake accounts, then they aren't petty children - they're bots and fake accounts. The only ones actually being petty children here are SN_BLACKMETA (a stupid and cringe name), whose efforts are wasted and meaningless.
The Israeli government may be genocidal, terrorist fucks, but these guys at SN_BLACKMETA are just fucking stupid.
Re: "Belongs to the USA" (Score:4, Funny)
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Only joke on the humor-rich target? And a rather morbid joke, too.
Re: "Belongs to the USA" (Score:4, Informative)
Yeah. My first donation to the archive was to help find it to store the climate science records the Trump administration was trying to make disappear.
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these guys at SN_BLACKMETA are just fucking stupid
My bet is that it's a group of Poes. [tvtropes.org] It's so insanely over-the-top that it's hard to imagine they're serious, even for the usual sort of "pro-palestinian" neonazi vandals that randomly vandalize smaller websites just for the masturbatory thrills.
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Israel is a democracy with free elections — perhaps, more so, than even the US
Irrelevant.
hating Israeli government is indistinguishable from hating Israel
False.
Hamas has won the first — and only — elections in Gaza, overwhelmingly. The elections were free with numerous foreign observers.
Irrelevant.
They are just as indistinguishable from "Palestine", as Israel's consecutive governments are from Israel.
Both false.
but you have no problem with government ownership of the means of production, do you?
Nope. The people should own them.
You've started by casually accusing the victims of genocide-attempts and terrorism of the very crimes, that are continuously committed against them
Because they are, and it's not ok.
That's worse even, than victim-blaming — at least, a girl, whose mini-skirt is blamed for her own rape, is spared the accusations of having raped the actual rapist!
This doesn't even make sense.
Keep going, this shit is gold tier comedy.
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"People" and "government" are the same thing in this context.
Not in my context, they aren't.
Castro just runs it for them, does not he.
No. Cuba and Castro have a (badly) planned economy featuring state-owned enterprises (state-owned means not owned by the people).
The population of Gaza — the supposed victims of genocide — has grown from 250K people in 1950 to 2.1 million today [statista.com].
The real data collected ends at 2015, well before the current conflict, and the rest was prediction based on historical growth. Israel has ended that growth and displaced approximately 90% of those living in Gaza, making none of that data relevant. And it will be many more years before we have reliable and accurate new information.
Only a dim-witted asshole like yourself would consider such 8x-fold population growth "a genocide". And it is not Ok.
Only a retard would
Re:OT: Death to Hamas (Score:4, Informative)
You could simplify that to "I decided to hate you and I call everyone I hate a communist with absolutely zero knowledge of what communism is".
OT: what is Communism (Score:1, Troll)
I cited the very definition of Communism — accusing Banbus of liking the government ownership of the means of production.
And, of course, he even confirms it [slashdot.org]:
Are you going to argue, that "people's ownership" and "government ownership" are in any way different from each other? Nope, you will not. Banbus does — but he is a dim-witted asshole...
And he is a Commun
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If the government owns it, then the people don't. So, yeah, very different from each other. I was not using "people" as some analog for "government". I meant people owned as in people owned. It's kind of like normal business ownership, except instead of one person owning and controlling the business, everyone who works at the business owns a part of the business. Sometimes called co-ops or profit-sharing. None of which is related to communism at all. If anything, it's called Market Socialism.
You don't seem
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Found the simpleton. See they immediate mention of communism when there are no Communists in any side of this conflict. See the immediate claim that anyone who speaks against anything must be a supporter of whatever that anyone is fighting against.
Re:"Belongs to the USA" (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't have to support either "side". What Hamas does is wrong. What the Israeli government has been doing in response is also wrong. Neither of them is "better" than the other, because they both stoop to the same lows. Violence doesn't end violence; it only breeds more.
I'm on the side of any and all the innocent civilians (of either country) being absolutely slaughtered by both of these sides.
Re:"Belongs to the USA" (Score:4, Informative)
"Violence doesn't end violence; it only breeds more."
Nice platitude, but reality shows otherwise. E.g. WWII was pretty violent and it was ended by violence.
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Eh, perhaps technically true. However, when wars end only the legal violence on legal combatants ends. There are still resentments and grudges which go on to fuel future violence of some sort. The violence will continue, even if it has to go into hiding and wait for a bit, until at least one side finally says no more killing, period, even IF the other side refuses to ever stop. You should be always willing/able to defend yourself to the best of your abilities, but there is no reason to kill the attacker. Di
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I want to comment on this: "Violence doesn't end violence; it only breeds more."
As Daina O says below, this is a platitude and demonstrably, factually untrue. While sometimes violence does not end violence, in other cases it does, very conclusively. Sometimes the bad guys win, sometimes the good guys win, but there have been many wars in history that have ended in conditional or unconditional surrender, with the violence ceasing at that point, as opposed to a stalemate. Again, as Daina says, World War 2 spr
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what would have been more just as a response to a pogrom killing 1,200 Israelis?
What would have been more just than killing thousands of children? You actually have to ask that question?
as opposed to the strategic aim of eliminating Hamas as an existential threat.
That is not the goal, and it never has been the goal. Netanyahu has bragged again and again about how he makes sure Hamas gets funded. He does this to justify genocide. And it worked on you, as you are now pro-genocide.
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See my other response about the violence part, you're only partially there. Not all the violence ends when a war ends (and Israel vs Hamas isn't a real war).
what would have been more just as a response to a pogrom killing 1,200 Israelis?
I don't know what exactly the "more just" response is, however, I do know that nothing the Israeli government has done so far has been any form of just. If anything, the Israeli government has done everything it can to fuel the hatred for them and further fan the flames practically goading Hamas into attacking. Literally every single thing that administ
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I don't know what exactly the "more just" response is
My suggestion is that the more just response would be policing Gaza instead of bombing it, holding those police accountable for actions like rape or use of human shields instead of pretending those actions were necessary, and at least as importantly as those things NOT SNIPING JOURNALISTS [wan-ifra.org].
Israel is the only nation that assassinates more journalists than the Saudis. That should tell you everything you need to know, but they're also deliberately murdering UN aid workers [truthout.org] (and others [responsibl...ecraft.org]) just in case you needed mo
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Violence doesn't end violence; it only breeds more.
A cute, trite saying; however, the reality of the situation is far more complex. Rather than getting into a deep philosophical discussion that will lead nowhere, I will refute your claim with a single example: If someone is assaulting a family member, do you ask the person assaulting to stop or do you assault them even more viciously so that they will stop assaulting your family member?
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do you ask the person assaulting to stop or do you assault them even more viciously so that they will stop assaulting your family member?
You don't need to assault them "more viciously" in order to disable and/or otherwise stop them. Nor does that mean do nothing and just ask.
Besides, self-defense and the defense of another is not what is in question. However, what Israel is currently doing is not defensive (not anymore). To go back to your example, it would be like if you have successfully stopped the attacker, your wife is a little banged up, but alive and ok, and as the guy flees you chase him down and kill him - you were in the right for
Re: "Belongs to the USA" (Score:2)
Here's a good question to ask in cases where you have no dog in the fight:
Would I rather be a dog in dogland, a cat in catland, or, more crucially: a cat in dogland, or a dog in catland?
The first part of the question is the one that jumps to mind first. Tribe is a powerful lure, after all. But the second part of the question is more important if you want a dispassionate answer.
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You know the AITA subreddit? They have a really good response for this situation: Everyone Sucks Here.
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You have to realize this is coming from a culture where you are told from above literally EVERYTHING you can and can't do. If something exists it's because powers above you WANTED it to exist. So if the archive comes from the USA it is specifically the highest powers in the USA that wanted it to exist.
Makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes no sense (Score:4, Interesting)
It helps if you discover through searching this group's time with a date boundary of before this week, that they're almost certainly "Anonymous Sudan" rebranded as a pro-Palestine group as of like... a few months ago?
So, trolls.
Re: Makes no sense (Score:1)
In any case, it wouldn't discourage me from continued donations. In my view, the IA was morally in the right, the suing publishers are ethically bankrupt anyway, and the last thing on their mind was defending authors, so screw them. And fuck current copyright laws. If my donations are used up to pay for the bills IA incurred for trying to challenge this stupid, unfair (not least to creators) system, I
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Exactly the kind of responsibility claim... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, "activist groups" sometimes use contorted logic to justify their choice of victims, but this example here is hilariously implausible.
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Poe's Law [tvtropes.org] is a thing. This smells of someone posting over-the-top bullshit to try to distract from who's really behind this group and the attack...
Internet Archive, the Great Satan (Score:2)
F*ck-off you morons.
Way to gain support for your cause (Score:5, Insightful)
What a brain-dead bunch of morons. No wonder so many people are sick and tired of anti-Israel activists. They act as if their cause is the only one on the planet, and that their cause justifies any amount of destruction and vandalism.
Fuck right off, SN_BLACKMETA
Are you serious? (Score:4, Insightful)
Did they seriously attack the Internet Archive on the anniversary of Hezbollah's attack on Israeli civilians and somehow think this would be make me supportive of them? Attacking the Internet Archive is a good way to erase any support I might have for your cause but on top of that, the date of the attack was not arbitrary or mere coincidence. I'm 100% against anyone aligning themselves with Hezbollah, the terrorist group that initiated this latest conflict.
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Hamas committed the 7 Oct 2023 atrocities, not Hezbollah. But it's a very minor distinction.
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Hamas is a SUNNI group dumbass. A simple google check could have shown you that.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:5, Informative)
Hamas are Sunni.
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Great reasoning there.
Israel is bombing A.
Israel is bombing B.
Therefore A == B.
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Both Hamas and Hezbollah are Islamofascist terrorist groups whose declared goal is the destruction of Israel. So while they are not the same, they are very similar.
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Hamas committed the 7 Oct 2023 atrocities, not Hezbollah.
A fair point but both are groups of folly that should be run out of every town they visit.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh man. You are blaming Hezbollah for the actions of Hamas.
That's the thinking that allowed the US to invade Iraq when it had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Informative)
I mean, it was Oct 8th when Hezbollah starts its sustained campaign of rocket attacks that shifted the grey zone down from southern Lebanon to northern Israel, so it's really a distinction without a difference.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because sonething is on the Internet doesn't make it true - Abraham Lincoln.
In all seriousness, all we have right now is an unsubstantiated, unverified allegation. This is actually less evidence than Graham Hancock offers.
The claim might be genuine, it might not. Until we know, it is merely a claim.
And even if genuine, did they choose the target, did they train themselves, and did they pay for the gear used? There's been more than one case in which we've later learned an act of terror was arranged by outside parties using a convenient middle-man to keep their fingers relatively clean.
There's also been plenty of genuine hacktivists who thought they were doing a good thing.
Right now, we don't have the means of telling these situations apart.
The war is going to take some time, may as well make use of that to find out more and determine who is responsible and why.
If the guy was being honest, fine, that'll take very little time to verify and we can respond accordingly. If he is lying through commission or omission, we'll also be able to verify that quite quickly, though finding the guilty will take longer.
Maybe one day (Score:1)
I can only pray I met this trash at a security conference so I can break every one of his fingers.
Obviously done by state actors or with their money (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a really pitiful and desperate attempt by state actors to trash people for calling out the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. The Wayback Archive has nothing to do with Israel, and the group's own rationale (on Twitter of course) does not even try to draw no real connection as to why Internet Archive would be a target. Compare that to BDS, which has a specific list of targets.
The people taking their word at face value with no questions asked, are the saddest of all.
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I was waiting for a "false flag" apologist to pipe up.
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Virtually every state nation in the world has a cyberwarfare group, we're in the middle of a global cyberwar that has been going on for some time, and all sides have declared disinformation a legitimate weapon of war.
That does NOT mean it is a false flag, we have zero evidence of that. But we also have zero evidence that the attacker is being honest.
And even if they are being honest, we don't know if the attack was funded by outsiders or the alleged hactivist was provided information by outsiders.
Before wav
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> The Wayback Archive has nothing to do with Israel,
So all the pride parades these asshats have ruined... those were government false flag ops too?
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THESE PEOPLE (Score:1)
are beyond retarded.
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Fucking dipshits (Score:3, Funny)
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fark (Score:1)
Let's help Internet Archive! (Score:2)
Donations or something to stay up!
Terrorist sympathiser (Score:2)
Not a hacktivist.
Crap (Score:2)
Assholes (Score:2)
Meanwhile the U.S. stays in the game because we're about the only ones who could have any possibility of influencing Israel to stop killing Palestinians, and we're also one of the ones who are pushing for a two-state permanent solution.
So nice job, assholes. You're just
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Which should make you suspicious. Truth is the first casualty in a war, and a full-scale cyberwar has been going on for some time. They may well be telling the truth, but it is unlikely.
Until or unless their assertion is verified, treat it as equally likely that the attack was from one of the many groups known to be hostile to the Internet Archive trying to avoid suspicion, a pro-Israeli group trying to create suspicion towards those they see as the enemy, a pro-Russia/Pro-North Korea group trying to sow mi
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On the topic of oil protests, have you read The Ministry for the Future? What we've seen thus far is pretty mild, in my view.
That's only vandalism. (Score:1)
Interesting (Score:2)
I'm not convinced that their alleged cause is genuine. There's several replies here that link them to completely different "causes". This sounds much, much more like a sponsored terrorist act intended to generate confusion.
Well, there you go (Score:1)
A pro-Palestenian hacktivist group called SN_BLACKMETA has taken responsibility for the hack on X and Telegram. "They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of 'Israel,'" the group said on X when someone asked them why they'd gone after the Archive.
Not really different from a lot of the thinking here.
These guys acted consistently on their beliefs. A train pulls into the next logical station.
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A pro-Palestenian hacktivist group called SN_BLACKMETA has taken responsibility for the hack on X and Telegram. "They are under attack because the archive belongs to the USA, and as we all know, this horrendous and hypocritical government supports the genocide that is being carried out by the terrorist state of 'Israel,'" the group said on X when someone asked them why they'd gone after the Archive.
Not really different from a lot of the thinking here.
These guys acted consistently on their beliefs. A train pulls into the next logical station.
Needless to say, their beliefs are whacked. They are very popular though, and this kind of stuff is where they lead you.
Inaccurate group name... (Score:1)
"SN_BLACKMETA" sounds "cool", but "The Internet Shitweasel Coalition" is far more accurate.
At least need to consider if this is false flag (Score:2)
Because doing this to Internet Archive is just so dumb, and won't help the stated cause.
Probably isn't false flag, as some people with extreme idealogy don't think through their actions, or are misinformed, whether intentionally or not.
Sounds like Hamas (Score:2)
Terrorist kiddies fail at basic logic (Score:2)