Internet Archive hack a signal that cultural institutions are cyber criminals’ newest target [Video]

Everything came to a halt for Brewster Kahle when he realized that the Internet Archive was hacked earlier this month.

The Internet Archive is an enormous collection of digitized print and audio-visual media based in San Francisco. Part of that archive is the Wayback Machine, a database that’s archived over 800 billion web pages.

Kahle founded it in 1996. He told As It Happens host Nil Köksal that his vision was to “build the next generation library … so that you could have access to all the published works of humankind.” 

Earlier this month, hackers stole and leaked data from the site’s over 31 million user accounts — including encrypted passwords and email addresses. 

The Internet Archive and Wayback Machine were taken offline to stop further data breaches. It took over a week to get the site fully back up and running again. 

“It’s just so sad,” said Kahle. “It’s great to be back up, and we have millions of …