archive.today is directing a DDOS attack against my blog

42 points by kot

dzwdz

Trying to piece together the story:

In 2023, gyrovague publicly doxxes the archive.today admin(s).
- edit: The article notes that the contact info used to register archive.today was also used to register some cybercrime-related sites (carding, etc). It's also worth noting that kiwi farms is cited as one of the sources for another claim.
In November 2025, feds subpoena the archive. The media notices, and, among other things, links to that doxx.
- btw, the 404 media article is, uh, interesting? it links archive.today to GamerGate, which seems like a great way to stir up shit.
Jan 8th: One of the names from the original doxx sends a GDPR complaint to wordpress.com about said doxx. The author decides that a request to take down the article is "entirely lacking in actionable detail" (?), and gets Gemini to write some bullshit about how the doxx is in the public interest. Wordpress.com eats it up.
- edit: The reason this was only done then was that "His action was not a GDPR violation until recently."; "The mentioned people got EU citizenship".
Jan 9th: webmaster@archive.today directly emails gyrovague with a request to take the doxx down "at least for 2-3 months".
[hard to tell exactly]: archive.today doesn't receive an answer, they start DDoSing the blog in question
Jan 15th: gyrovague notices the email in their spam folder, saying they "would be more inclined to cooperate if you were not simultaneously sending me legal cease and desist letters and attempting to DDOS my site." They ask what in particular should be deleted.
Jan 25th: gyrovague gets no answer. They decide that "taking the blog post down entirely is not an option" (without justification), and decide to double down. "if you don't cease the DDOS, I'll have to publish a follow up blog post, a copy of which is attached for your review."
Jan 26th: archive.today responds, saying that the only response from gyrovague they've received was the AI generated response to the GDPR complaint. "now there is no other option but to escalate the matter in various ways."
[...]
archive.today threatens to create a gay dating app (???) named after gyrovague's real last name, and to write an investigation on gyrovague's supposed Nazi grandfather
- gyrovague doesn't like being doxxed, so they redact that out said real name
They do still really like doxxing others, so not only do they not remove the original post, they follow through with posting the article we're discussing right now

It seems like both parties just kept escalating this at every opportunity. I'm at a loss for words.

refi64

gyrovague doesn't like being doxxed

They do still really like doxxing others

behold, the internet in the year 2026.
danny
The media notices, and, among other things, links to that doxx.
- archive.today suspected that since these articles contain much more gyrovague than a.t., they could have been written and sent to the media by gyrovague.
- a.t. accuses gyrovague not of doxx but of promoting the-fbi-tweet-story in the media in order to promote his ad-farm blog with doxx.
- a.t. sent GDPR requests and spoke with gyrovague to find out that SEO links to the blog are more important to him than the integrity of the content (gyrovague agreed to change the post but not to break the SEO links from the media), which confirmed the suspicions.
- a.t. started lazy ddos just to force to make wordpress.com close the blog from bots in order to strike a blow to its valuable SEO, as gyrovague was trying to contact many times just to stop the ddos, which did not break the blog and did not cost gyrovague a penny, but for some (gyro)vague reason greatly disturbs him
- dzwdz
  
  Thanks, I didn't really understand a.t's accusations there.
  
  <opinion>
  
  I'm not convinced that SEO was gyrovague's motivation. The conclusion I came to yesterday was that they probably wanted to expose the cybercrime associations of a.t? It seems that there were some parts of the article they didn't want to change, and the carding link seems like the strongest accusation in there (even if the actual evidence is really weak). I think this would explain their behavior?
  
  I also doubt they were pulling the strings of the media? This would be a really elaborate plot just to gain a bit of SEO. A much simpler explanation is that whoever was the first to report on this just found gyro's doxx via a web search (or remembered it from HN), and decided to include it in their article.
arjun-menon

Thank you for the write up of what’s been going on here. I wonder if the Internet Archive org could adopt this project…
- adrien
  
  Archive.today "bypasses" a number of paywalls and gets subscriber-only contents on some websites. Archive.org cannot completely easily do that and IIRC they've recently been denied an status equivalent to a public library (that can therefore freely "lend" copies temporarily).
  
  Publishers really don't like archive.today. Publishers also make it needed by putting limitations everywhere however.
eminence32

Thanks for the additional context.

It does seem like a flaw in our human nature that we find it so hard to descalate when we've been wronged.

arcayr

the script added to force participation in a ddos attack is pretty unhinged, but … i honestly don't think they should expect any sympathy, nor do they deserve any. i find it interesting that despite their journey to out someone else, it's more than okay to obfuscate (not just omit, but actively obfuscate) their own name while posting this.

what on earth is the motivation for trying to dox the operators of a.t? a.t is, to my knowledge, a universally useful service that has helped the internet route around censorship and/or "history massaging" more than a few times. it's well known that several organisations are pretty upset about its existence because of this, and that for the continued operation of the service the owners should stay off the radar. is the original "on the trail of … " just for some sort of selfish e-clout?

i don't in any way agree that there should be retaliation like this, but the idea that you're not actively harming the overall health of the internet by performing "what cool kids these days call osint" here is laughable. this isn't like brian krebs unmasking the people behind a credit card fraud ring, this is as if jimmy wales went to great lengths to obfuscate their identity and then this person came along and outed him for clicks.

dzwdz

it's more than okay to obfuscate (not just omit, but actively obfuscate) their own name while posting this.

I can't edit my comment anymore, but I want to note that their name is actually in the blog's sidebar. (The name wasn't the only thing redacted from that email, though).

vaguelytagged

The script being added to send a fetch to the blog is insane behavior. Thank god ublock stops things like this.

adrien

I'm concerned that people care about the allegations of nazism in gyrovague's family and give so much credit to archive.today's allegations.

On the nazism part:

I hope you don't know anybody in Germany or Austriz: 8.5 millions NSDAP members in 1945 and a few generations later, you're probably covering the whole countries
By the way, same for Japan
This narrative about nazis is what we've been getting from Russia for years.
Comments from a Russian national about Finland withdrawing from the Ottawa treaty seem to somehow be unaware of the large country in grey on that map: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty#/media/File:Ottawa_Treaty_members.svg
You can't talk about nazism and not mention Stalin's USSR. At least it shows that pointing fingers, whataboutism and kompromat are still very effective.

Don't think I'm defending nazism or nazis.

I'm not even trying to criticize Russia for its acts here. I'm merely pointing some of their typical methods against opponents that seem to somehow be effective here.

edited: s/8.5 millions/\0 NSDAP members/

danny

It is incomplete without https://archive-is.tumblr.com/tagged/patokallio he is replying to not mention explicitly

WilhelmVonWeiner

I'm glad someone went out of their way to dox and to contribute to the inevitable shutdown of one of the most useful archival sites on the web. That's epic.

zk

Yeah honestly this is the part that pisses me off more than archive.today's (admittedly insane) counter of DDOSing this blog.
adrien

I'm sorry but are you somehow defending archive.is people here?

I use archive.today and appreciate it but you can't deny some of its means are unclear so I appreciate some light there. I also wish that the archive.today can continue operating and i would prefer some details to be kept light.

Their behaviour is crap and worse than the investigation. It doesn't look like girovague did something that law enforcement agencies couldn't do so there's no need to put such a blame on them.

With recent events, both parties are acting poorly. Don't single out one of the victims to blame them however.
- gcupc
  
  It doesn't look like girovague did something that law enforcement agencies couldn't do so there's no need to put such a blame on them.
  
  A person going out of their way to do law enforcement's job for them, especially in the case where it's against the public interest, is.... definitely a thing someone could do.
adamcstephens

What’s up with the inline ads on this person’s blog?
mdaniel

Since the blog was under DDOS, I thought it was best to use one of the caches in the header drop-down, only to realize one of them is archive.today :-/

The archive.org and ghostarchive.org links seem to work fine, if anyone else wants to avoid sending another request to the origin site
ocramz

everything about this story is insane. Mods!
zarb

Good! Serves you right!