Wikipedia Blocks Hundreds of Thousands of Links to Archive.today Service

Wikipedia stops using Archive.today as a reference (photo: doc. unsplash)

JAKARTA - Wikipedia editors have decided to delete and block all links leading to Archive.today due to a recent Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack.

That way, 695,000 Archive.today references spread across various Wikipedia articles will be eliminated. This step was taken after the contributors conducted internal discussions regarding the web archiving service.

In the results of the discussion, the contributors agreed to immediately include the domain in the spam blacklist for security reasons. The main trigger for this blocking is the suspicion that Archive.today inserts malicious code to carry out DDoS attacks.

The JavaScript code is suspected of hijacking the user's browser to attack Jani Patokallio's blog. In addition to security issues, the integrity of data on the archiving site is now in doubt.

"Wikipedia should not direct its readers to websites that hijack users' computers," wrote one administrator in a discussion page, quoted by TechCrunch on Tuesday, February 24.

This DDoS attack started with the posting of a blog by Patokallio investigating the mysterious ownership of Archive.today. The site's administrators reportedly sent a series of threats after a request to remove the upload was rejected.

The management of Archive.today has responded through their official blog. The archiving service questioned why the new media had raised their problems with Patokallio now.

"I don't expect you to write something good, but there's a lot of drama, right?" wrote the site's administrator. They also stated that they would begin to reduce the intensity of the DDoS attack.

Now, Wikipedia editors are ordered to replace old links with the original source or an alternative archive. Services such as the Wayback Machine are recommended as a much safer alternative.