After a major breach, the Internet Archive founder sends casual bad-news messages.

The Archive, including the Wayback Machine, is home to more than 840 billion web pages. Last month, the BBC reported the Archive as a valuable and vulnerable resource, and this month, we’re seeing why. The article also describes controversy about the service offering books and other content for free, the subject of a lawsuit the organization lost in 2023.

Although user information for more than 31 million people was compromised, the founder’s message on X focused on what most concerned the public: the integrity of the content and when the site would be back up.

In addition to the message on X, I found only three short posts on Bluesky and Mastodon—all below and at right:

Update: @internetarchive’s data has not been corrupted. Services are currently stopped to upgrade internal systems. We are working to restore services as quickly and safely as possible. Sorry for this disruption.

A note on the website just says simply this:

Temporarily Offline

Internet Archive services are temporarily offline.

Please check our official accounts, including Twitter/X, Bluesky or Mastodon for the latest information.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

These aren’t the typical data breach emails from a CEO. Kahle doesn’t offer suggestions for users to, for example, change passwords, which others advise.

He sounds like someone who lives in a high-crime area and expects to be robbed: “Sorry, but DDOS folks are back . . .” Kahle says nothing about the group, but a Newsweek article reported that a "pro-Palestinian hacktivist movement” claimed responsibility for the attack. Kahle might be more cautious about accepting that claim—or might not want to give the group publicity, whether it is responsible or not.