[…] 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.
It’s been a hard year for the Internet Archive. In July, the site went down due to “environmental factors” during a major heat wave in the U.S. Last month it lost an appeal in the lawsuit Hachette and other major publishers launched against it.
“If our patrons around the globe think this latest situation is upsetting, then they should be very worried about what the publishing and recording industries have in mind,” Kahle said in a post about the DDoS attack in May. “I think they are trying to destroy this library entirely and hobble all libraries everywhere. But just as we’re resisting the DDoS attack, we appreciate all the support in pushing back on this unjust litigation against our library and others.”
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Source: Hacktivists Claim Responsibility for Taking Down the Internet Archive
Well done SN_BLACKMETA – you have just played into Israels hands. People who were on the fence about Palestine in the West well definitely now lean towards Israel and away from Palestine 🙁
Robin Edgar
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