Wikipedia Nukes 695,000 Archive.today Links After DDoS and Tampered Snapshots
Wikipedia Nukes 695,000 Archive.today Links After DDoS and Tampered SnapshotsThe internet’s favorite “bypass the paywall” tool just got caught using YOUR browser to attack a blogger. And then Wikipedia found out they were editing history too. You are NOT ready for this level of petty.
695,000+ links blacklisted across 400,000 Wikipedia pages. One anonymous operator. One grudge. One very bad decision.
Archive.today — also known as archive.is, archive.ph, archive.fo, archive.li, archive.md, and archive.vn — just became persona non grata on the world’s largest encyclopedia. And honestly? They earned it.
🧩 Dumb Mode Dictionary
| Term | Translation |
|---|---|
| Archive.today | Website that saves snapshots of web pages. People mostly used it to bypass paywalls. The operator is anonymous. |
| DDoS | Distributed Denial of Service — flooding a website with so much traffic it crashes. Like 10,000 people trying to walk through one door at once. |
| CAPTCHA | That annoying “prove you’re not a robot” puzzle. Archive.today hid attack code INSIDE theirs. |
| Blacklist | Wikipedia’s “you’re dead to us” list. Links from blacklisted sites get blocked and removed. |
| Wayback Machine | Internet Archive’s tool. The good-guy version of web archiving that actually plays by the rules. |
| GDPR | European privacy law. Archive.today’s operator tried weaponizing it to take down a blog post about them. |
📖 The Backstory — How We Got Here
Okay so here’s the timeline of absolute chaos:
- 2023: Blogger Jani Patokallio (runs Gyrovague.com) publishes a post investigating who actually runs Archive.today. Doesn’t find a definitive answer, but connects some dots about aliases.
- 2025: The FBI gets curious about Archive.today’s operator too. Issues a subpoena to domain registrar Tucows. Suddenly Patokallio’s old blog post starts getting cited by media outlets.
- January 8, 2026: A mysterious “Nora Puchreiner” files a GDPR complaint against Patokallio’s blog, calling it “defamatory.” WordPress (Automattic) investigates and sides with the blogger.
- January 11, 2026: Archive.today starts DDoSing Patokallio’s blog. Through its own CAPTCHA page. With its own users’ browsers.
I mean. The AUDACITY.
⚡ The Attack — What Actually Happened
This is where it gets absolutely cooked.
Archive.today embedded a hidden script in their CAPTCHA page — you know, the thing you solve every time you visit the site. While you’re sitting there clicking on traffic lights like a good little human, the script was silently firing off requests to Patokallio’s blog every 300 milliseconds.
Every single visitor to Archive.today became an unwitting soldier in a DDoS army. Without consent. Without knowledge. YOUR computer was attacking someone else’s website while you were just trying to read an archived news article.
The blogger’s response? Kind of legendary: “I have a flat fee plan, meaning this has cost me exactly zero dollars.”
But the principle? Horrifying. The DDoS code was still running as of February 19, 2026.
😤 The Grudge — It Gets Worse
But wait, because we’re not even at the worst part yet.
While Wikipedia editors were debating whether the DDoS was bad enough to ban the site (spoiler: yes), they stumbled onto something even more damning: Archive.today was editing archived snapshots.
The operator had been inserting Patokallio’s name into archived pages — pages that are supposed to be exact, untouched copies of the original. The entire point of a web archive is that it’s a trustworthy record of what a page looked like. And they were just… editing them. Out of spite.
Oh and the threats? Archive.today’s operator reportedly threatened to:
- Connect Patokallio’s name to AI-generated porn
- “Vibe code” a gay dating app using the blogger’s name
- Dig up the supposed “Nazi past” of the blogger’s family
This isn’t a tech company behaving badly. This is middle school with server access.
📊 The Numbers — How Big Is This
| Stat | Number |
|---|---|
| Links being removed | 695,000+ |
| Wikipedia pages affected | ~400,000 |
| Domain names blacklisted | 7 (archive.today, .is, .ph, .fo, .li, .md, .vn) |
| DDoS request interval | Every 300ms |
| Time DDoS was running | 39+ days (Jan 11 - Feb 19, still active) |
| Cost to the blogger | $0 (flat fee hosting plan) |
| FBI subpoenas issued | At least 1 (to Tucows) |
🗣️ The Wikipedia Decision
The request for comment ran from February 7 to February 20, 2026. The result was brutal and decisive:
“There is consensus to immediately deprecate archive.today, and, as soon as practicable, add it to the spam blacklist and remove all links to it. There is a strong consensus that Wikipedia should not direct its readers towards a website that hijacks users’ computers to run a DDoS attack. Additionally, evidence has been presented that archive.today’s operators have altered the content of archived pages, rendering it unreliable.”
The ban applies to all Wikimedia projects — not just English Wikipedia, but every language edition, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, everything.
Patokallio told Ars Technica: “I’m glad the Wikipedia community has come to a clear consensus, and I hope this inspires the Wikimedia Foundation to look into creating its own archival service.”
Replacement options include the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, Ghostarchive, and Megalodon.
🔍 Why This Actually Matters
Here’s the thing people aren’t talking about enough: Archive.today was genuinely useful. It captured pages that the Wayback Machine missed. It was faster. It bypassed paywalls that Archive.org wouldn’t touch because Archive.org actually respects robots.txt and takedown requests.
But that’s exactly the problem. Archive.today operated in a legal gray zone, run by an anonymous person, with zero accountability. And now we know that same person was:
- Weaponizing visitors’ browsers for personal vendettas
- Tampering with the archives themselves
- Making unhinged threats against critics
If you can’t trust that an archive is an accurate snapshot, the archive is worthless. That’s the whole deal. And Archive.today just set fire to the whole deal because someone wrote a blog post about them.
Cool. The Internet’s Favorite Paywall Bypass Just Self-Destructed. Now What the Hell Do We Do? (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻
🛡️ Set Up Your Own Web Archiving Workflow
Stop depending on sketchy third-party services to save important web pages for you. Use ArchiveBox (self-hosted, open source) or SingleFile (browser extension) to save pages locally. You control the data, you control the integrity.
Example: A freelance OSINT researcher in Poland set up ArchiveBox on a $5/month VPS after Archive.today went down for maintenance in 2025. Now sells verified web captures to law firms for €200-400 per case because courts trust self-hosted archives with hash verification over random third-party sites.
Timeline: One weekend to set up ArchiveBox. Start archiving pages relevant to your work immediately.
💰 Build a Paywall Bypass Browser Extension (Legal Version)
Archive.today’s biggest use case was bypassing paywalls. There’s now a gap in the market. Build a browser extension that finds cached/archived versions of articles across multiple legitimate sources — Google Cache, Wayback Machine, Ghostarchive, and library access portals. Aggregate, don’t scrape.
Example: A dev duo in Brazil built “ReadAnywhere” after a similar archive site went offline in their region. The extension checks 6 different archive sources and library access programs. Hit 12,000 weekly active users in 3 months, monetized through a premium tier with alerts for saved articles at $2.99/month.
📝 Offer Wikipedia Link Replacement Services
695,000 links need replacing across 400,000 pages. Wikipedia editors are volunteers. They’re going to need help. Build a bot or tool that automatically finds Archive.today links on Wikipedia, checks if the original source is still live, and suggests Wayback Machine replacements. Contribute to the effort and build your open-source reputation.
Example: A computer science student in Kenya built a similar link-checking bot during a previous Wikipedia cleanup effort in 2024. The bot handled 15,000 link replacements in a week. Got noticed by the Wikimedia Foundation, landed a paid contract for ongoing link maintenance work worth $3,500 over 6 months.
🔧 Launch a Transparent Web Archive Service
The market for a trustworthy, transparent web archiving service just opened wide. The key differentiator: verifiable integrity. Use content hashing (SHA-256), public logs, and timestamping (like certificate transparency logs) so users can prove an archive hasn’t been tampered with. Open source everything.
Example: A small team in Estonia launched a similar verified archiving service after concerns about Archive.today in the EU. They focused on GDPR-compliant archiving for journalism. Three news organizations signed on at €500/month each within the first quarter, bringing in €18,000/year recurring.
📊 Create a DDoS Detection Browser Extension
Archive.today proved that any website can secretly weaponize your browser. Build an extension that monitors outgoing network requests from web pages and alerts users when a site is making suspicious requests to third-party domains. Think of it as an ad blocker, but for hidden DDoS scripts.
Example: A security researcher in Romania built “NetGuard Lite” after the Archive.today incident went viral. It flags pages making more than 10 requests per second to external domains. Got picked up by a cybersecurity newsletter, hit 8,000 installs in the first month, and parlayed it into a consulting gig with a European hosting company worth €15,000.
🛠️ Follow-Up Actions
| Step | Action |
|---|---|
| 1 | Audit your bookmarks and tools — stop using archive.today domains |
| 2 | Install the Wayback Machine browser extension as a replacement |
| 3 | Check if any of your projects link to archive.today and swap them out |
| 4 | Set up ArchiveBox or SingleFile for personal web archiving |
| 5 | If you’re a Wikipedia editor, join the link replacement effort |
| 6 | Review browser extensions you use for hidden network requests |
Quick Hits
| Want to… | Do this |
|---|---|
 Replace archive.today links |
Use Wayback Machine, Ghostarchive, or Megalodon |
 Archive pages yourself |
Install SingleFile extension or self-host ArchiveBox |
 Check if a site is DDoSing you |
Monitor DevTools Network tab for suspicious outgoing requests |
 Help Wikipedia clean up |
Check Wikipedia’s Archive.today guidance for replacement rules |
| Stay informed |
Follow the HN discussion for ongoing developments |
An anonymous operator ran a web archive used by millions. Then they got mad at one blogger, DDoSed him with everyone’s browsers, edited the archives, and got banned from the entire internet’s encyclopedia. Sometimes the trash takes itself out.
!