Ukraine’s Internet Is Being Archived To Protect It From Impending Cyberwars
Image via ArchiveTeam Warrior
As the dire threat in Ukraine escalates, there are fears that conflict will not only take place on the ground but through cyberspace, too. So, a group of archivists are working at top speed in an effort to preserve as much of Ukraine’s internet as possible, just in case.
ArchiveTeam Warrior is a virtual archiving app that downloads past versions of websites. Founded in 2009, this is a group of archivists and programmers endeavoring to retain control of what survived on the internet.
Input reports that when it first started, the site was focusing on preserving online artifacts—things like Google+ and TwitPic might ring a bell. After these websites are downloaded, they’re re-uploaded to the service’s servers and hosted by the Internet Archive.
“Cyberwar and cybersecurity… people have been talking about this for some time—at least since the mid-’90s—[saying] that as reliance on internet infrastructure increased, the more likely these assets would be first targeted in an actual interstate war,” says Welton Chang, founder of social media intelligence firm Pyrra Tech, to Input.
“Backing up the data also ensures that if a site is taken down in a way that’s not recoverable, there will still be a copy of it that will go up later on.”
Despite the risks associated with lending their computer’s processing power and their network bandwidth to help save Ukraine’s internet, volunteers are still stepping up to contribute to the effort.
“War has always been a threat to culture and knowledge as well as to the libraries and archives that preserve it,” William Kilbride, executive director of the Digital Preservation Coalition, says.
“Ask the National Library of Bosnia, burned to ashes by the Serbian militia in 1992. The digital age is no different.”
The publication reports that upwards of 2.4Tib (2.6TB) of data has been backed up so far, largely from websites ending in “.ua,” which is the top-level domain name in Ukraine. Content consists of web pages, PDFs, and other files hosted on websites.
At the time of writing, this number stands at 2.85Tib (3.13TB).
[via Input, image via ArchiveTeam Warrior]
