this post was submitted on 27 May 2024
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1355
The Internet Archive is under a DDoS attack (bsky.app)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
216 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Brought to you by the Department of Erasing History.

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Someone wanted to erase history.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Well they made a bad job of it because you can't do that with a DDOS attack. Basically it's the same as picketing the entrance to a building. All you need is a lot of people anyone can do it at any time.

Actually entering the building and manipulating contents it holds is much more difficult, as then you actually have to engage with the building security.

A DDOS attack can never delete data.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

A DDOS alone cannot delete data, but like your picketing analogy, if you can get in first, the picketing will keep out anyone looking to stop your interference.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Luckily non of the data was deleted

[–] [email protected] 25 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It might be that someone wanted to change something that was on a website before the archive could get to it too.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (1 children)

That’s a ridiculous amount of effort to go through to slow down a scraper for one site, especially when that site could just be… turned off.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If you own the domain you can disable the crawler on it. And remove previous scrapes.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

Then it still makes no sense, as you being unable to take down the content means you also very likely can’t edit the content. I can’t think of a situation where you:

  1. Need content to not be scraped
  2. Need time to remove/edit that content
  3. Have access to do the above
  4. Don’t have access to pull the content immediately
  5. Have control of a large enough botnet to take down Internet Archive
  6. Don’t have a big enough botnet to take down the aforementioned content
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

On an individual level, having a massive archive of everything you've ever posted isn't always a good thing, especially when mentally ill people will quote mine a single post and then try to misuse it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

Well that's my point... It doesn't make sense because you can just go after the fact and make the request to take it all down.

You have to be stupidly paranoid and obscenely stupid to believe that a DDOS is the correct answer if this is the case.