Wikipedia Bans Archive.today Over DDoS and Data Tampering
as primary reasons.
TAGS: Wikipedia, Archive.today, Cybersecurity, Internet Archiving, DDoS
CONTEUDO:
Wikipedia has officially moved to ban Archive.today from its platform, citing serious concerns regarding the service’s involvement in cyberattacks and the integrity of its archived records. The decision follows a community consensus to immediately deprecate the tool and purge more than 695,000 existing links across the encyclopedia.
Security Risks and Alleged DDoS Attacks
The primary driver for the blacklisting is evidence that Archive.today has been used to facilitate Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. Specifically, editors pointed to incidents beginning on January 11, where users interacting with the archive’s CAPTCHA page were unknowingly forced to execute JavaScript code.
This script targeted the blog of Jani Patokallio, a writer who had previously investigated the enigmatic operations of Archive.today. By flooding his site with search requests, the archive service allegedly sought to inflate Patokallio’s hosting costs as a form of retaliation. In discussions regarding the ban, editors stated that Wikipedia cannot direct its readers to a service that compromises user computers to conduct such attacks.
Integrity Concerns and Altered Snapshots
Beyond the security risks, the reliability of the archive has come into question. Wikipedia editors identified multiple instances where snapshots stored on the platform appeared to have been tampered with. These alterations included the manual insertion of Patokallio’s name into archived pages, leading the community to conclude that the service is no longer a trustworthy source for citations.
The service, which operates under various domains including archive.is and archive.ph, has a volatile history with Wikipedia. It was previously blacklisted in 2013, only to be reinstated in 2016. However, the current consensus requires the immediate removal of all existing links, urging editors to replace them with primary sources or alternative services like the Wayback Machine.
The “Opaque Mystery” of Ownership
The conflict traces back to a 2023 investigation by Patokallio, who described the ownership of Archive.today as an “opaque mystery.” While he could not confirm a specific identity, he theorized the site was likely the work of a single, highly skilled individual with connections to Russia and Europe.
Following the publication of that investigation, Patokallio reported receiving a series of escalating threats from the site’s webmaster, who had demanded the post be removed for several months. In internal communications shared by Patokallio, the webmaster expressed frustration with how mainstream media outlets utilized his site, while also commenting on the Wikipedia ban. On a blog linked to the service, the operator admitted to the “DDoS” activity and suggested that their value to Wikipedia was primarily in “offloading copyright issues” rather than bypassing paywalls.