A Mysterious DDoS Against The Internet Archive And 600,000 Dead ActionTec Routers

With No One Claiming Responsibility

It’s been an odd week with two major attacks reported, one ongoing and one from last year, with no one to claim responsibility for either.   Starting on Sunday, the Internet Archive has been fighting off a DDoS attack which has made accessing their site problematic.  The attacks seem to have petered out as the week progressed and the site seems reachable now.  There was also an announcement from an unknown group calling themselves SN_Blackmeta has claimed responsibility, however they are completely unknown to security researchers, so take that with a grain of salt.  The Internet Archive has to fight off whatever idiots decided to DDoS them, along with legal battles about whether the contents of the Internet Archive should be covered under fair use rights and are asking for donations if you can swing a few bucks.

The other mysterious attack targeted ActionTec’s T3200 and T3260 routers, bricking them with a bad firmware update.  The attacks happened between October 25 and 27, 2023 and targeted a single ISP.  The Register and others have not been able to determine which ISP was attacked, as none of the ones they spoke with would confirm their customers were the victims.  That makes the attack doubly odd, we know it happened but not who did it nor who was targeted.

Let’s hope for a quiet weekend, eh?