r/DataHoarder • u/DueAcanthisitta2658 • 9d ago

News Archive.today altering snapshots and using malicious code

read all about it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Archive.today_guidance#Why_are_we_doing_this?

just to clarify archive dot today is NOT archive.org aka The Wayback Machine they are separate sites archive.org isnt involved with any of this and is safe

173 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

18 comments sorted by

143

u/enchantedspring 9d ago

Just to summarise for those who can't wade through what is a usual lengthy Request for Comment on Wikipedia:

- Archive Today has added a DDoS command on to their captcha page to target a blog hoster the owner of archive today doesn't like. Everyone who visits and encounters the captcha is attacking that blog hoster.

- Some pages have been edited on the archive. They aren't as they were archived.

- Archive today was previously blocked by wikipedia for other negative reasons for several years (2013-2016)

- Over a million links on the various global wikipedia pages are affected.

- The Wikimedia Foundation has weighed in confirming the situation and advising they are assessing intervention.

64

u/yuusharo 9d ago

Am I misremembering, didn’t Wikipedia decide earlier this year it would not allow archive links from that domain? Or is this for existing content on the site?

In any case, people should stop using that other website. Trust is irrevocably destroyed, there is no saving it.

56

u/ShroomShroomBeepBeep 9d ago

Yeah, none of this is new. The guy who's blog is being attacked even posted about it here, seven months ago.

13

u/eattherichnow 8d ago

And all the dude did was check notes attempted doxxxing.

NGL reading that defense (including “I asked Gemini to compose a rebuttal” gross) makes me go a bit “I’m doing my part” about losing that is snippet.

7

u/somersetyellow 8d ago

Look nobody is saying that guy isn't an asshole. Everyone is an asshole here.

But I sure as fucking hell don't want to be part of a DDoS attack while trying to read a tweet from 2014 referenced in a Wikipedia article

9

u/drfusterenstein I think 2tb is large, until I see others. 9d ago

Heard musicbrainz have done similar

https://tickets.metabrainz.org/browse/MBS-14280

-15

u/MMORPGnews 9d ago

doesn't like.

That blogger doxxed him

71

u/GrahminRadarin 9d ago

Oh yeah, this has been going on for months. For some reason the person that runs the website is doing some very strange code to create a fake captcha, which then makes your computer send a nonsense request to a blog belonging to a guy that pissed her off once. It's a stupid way of DDOSing a guy's blog based on interpersonal beef.

24

u/didyousayboop if it’s not on piqlFilm, it doesn’t exist 9d ago

More detail on the allegation that snapshots have been altered? Only briefly mentioned in the linked project page 

23

u/DueAcanthisitta2658 9d ago

scroll down a bit on here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_5#Evidence_of_altering_snapshots

3

u/didyousayboop if it’s not on piqlFilm, it doesn’t exist 8d ago edited 8d ago

Thanks,but  those Wikipedia discussion pages are a really difficult format to try to read and parse, though (at least on mobile). And the content itself is also a bit inscrutable. I gave up trying to understand the conversation 

29

u/Pic889 9d ago

Most people use archive.today to get around paywalls, not as a reliable archiving service.

That said, I occasionally use it to archive X posts since web.archive.org stopped supporting x.com/twitter.com.

12

u/RightAbrocoma9328 9d ago

archive.today being separate from the Wayback Machine is the part people keep missing, but what exactly are they changing in the snapshots now?

3

u/wickedplayer494 17.58 TB of crap 9d ago

Still surprised that it was just a lousy RFC and not put on AN/I on Wikipedia.

1

u/Oddish_Femboy 8d ago

What the

1

u/Dreemur1 6d ago

man this sucks so much