Wikipedia officially blacklists all links to Archive Today over bizarre DDOS attack and manipulated archives — website operator caught tweaking their own archive

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Vendetta against blogger results in a poor ending for everyone involved.

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(Image credit: Getty Images)

A few days ago, we covered an eyebrow-raising bit of news about the operator(s) of Archive Today leveraging their website to allegedly execute a denial-of-service attack against Jani Patokallio, a security blogger. At the time, Wikipedia considered dropping all links to Archive Today (AT), a decision argued for and against in open discussion. That decision has quickly been made final thanks to AT altering its own archived pages to fuel its feud.

Specifically, AT's maintainers reportedly tweaked snapshots of a third-party blog post that Patokallio referred to in his February 2026 article about the DDoS attack. AT changed the name of a "Nora" person in said post to Jani Patokallio, making it look as if he had written some comments there. Eagle-eyed Wikipedia editors spotted the alterations, which have since then been reverted, but the action made it easy for them reach a final decision.

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Bruno Ferreira
Bruno Ferreira
Contributor

Bruno Ferreira is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware. He has decades of experience with PC hardware and assorted sundries, alongside a career as a developer. He's obsessed with detail and has a tendency to ramble on the topics he loves. When not doing that, he's usually playing games, or at live music shows and festivals.

12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • bit_user
    The artilce said:
    This turn of events is ultimately a loss for everyone involved, as Archive Today is speedy, reliable, and has top-notch scraping quality. An archive has little use if its contents can't be 100% trusted, though.
    I'm with Wikipedia on this. If Archive Today can't be trusted to preserve the original contents of what it hosts, then it doesn't matter how fast they are or how good their scrapes are.

    I think the actions of AT seem incredibly juvenile and I certainly wouldn't trust them after this.

    I hope some of the contributors who helped make AT as good as it allegedly is (I haven't used it, personally) find their way over to archive.org.
    Reply
  • usertests
    Archive Today remains an invaluable resource with hundreds of millions of pages saved.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    usertests said:
    Archive Today remains an invaluable resource with hundreds of millions of pages saved.
    But, if you can't trust them not to be tampered with, when it really counts, then so what?
    Reply
  • usertests
    bit_user said:
    But, if you can't trust them not to be tampered with, when it really counts, then so what?
    So you'll have to save very important web pages with multiple services (there are four major third-party ones that you can use for free), and hope that some of them survive, aren't blocked from grabbing the content, and don't delete the result.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    usertests said:
    So you'll have to save very important web pages with multiple services
    While redundancy is good, I personally would only support services that subscribe to the true ethos of an archivist. That means preserving the past, no matter how you personally feel about it.

    Otherwise, we're just living in some version of Orwell's 1984.
    Reply
  • usertests
    bit_user said:
    While redundancy is good, I personally would only support services that subscribe to the true ethos of an archivist. That means preserving the past, no matter how you personally feel about it.

    Otherwise, we're just living in some version of Orwell's 1984.
    Redundancy is everything if it's the difference between media and information being lost and found. Archive Today must and will continue to be used. Or studied, if it ends up discontinued with the contents uploaded as a torrent somewhere.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    usertests said:
    Redundancy is everything if it's the difference between media and information being lost and found.
    Okay, so let's say you find a page in Archive Today and archive.org, but they differ. Which one do you trust? And if you can't trust the one in AT, then what good is it?

    Or, what if it's only in AT? Now, your only copy is untrustworthy. Is that really better than not thinking you have an authentic snapshot?
    Reply
  • usertests
    bit_user said:
    Okay, so let's say you find a page in Archive Today and archive.org, but they differ. Which one do you trust? And if you can't trust the one in AT, then what good is it? What if it's only in AT? Now, your only copy is untrustworthy. Is that really better than not thinking you have an authentic snapshot?
    Yes, it is, depending on what your goal is. Maybe the information on the page is giving you a lead to find something somewhere else. Refer to lost media searches where people are combing through old website archives to find elusive screenshots and text.

    Temporary alterations to a single page don't spoil the hundreds of millions of other pages. The maintainer made a mistake, but I actually am going to trust that 99.999999% of pages on Archive Today are authentic. I'm more worried about it continuing to exist, as some content is only saved there, and we have limited options for archiving the web. All of which are under threat, including the giant Internet Archive.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    usertests said:
    Temporary alterations to a single page don't spoil the hundreds of millions of other pages. The maintainer made a mistake, but I actually am going to trust that 99.999999% of pages on Archive Today are authentic.
    Really? How do you know? A real archivist treats the integrity of the archive as sacrosanct. Once a willingness to cross that bridge has been demonstrated, it calls into question what other circumstances they'd be willing to alter archived pages.

    Furthermore, the using Archive Today's machines to launch a DDOS attack shows a degree of immaturity that forever spoils my trust. I'd never support a site where the resources I helped to support might be misused in such an egregious fashion.

    I also think transparency is important. If the owner of Archive Today is so concerned about being unmasked, it raises troubling questions about why.
    Reply
  • usertests
    bit_user said:
    Furthermore, the using Archive Today's machines to launch a DDOS attack shows a degree of immaturity that forever spoils my trust. I'd never support a site where the resources I helped to support might be misused in such an egregious fashion.
    You have never used or supported the site, so the status quo will continue.
    bit_user said:
    I also think transparency is important. If the owner of Archive Today is so concerned about being unmasked, it raises troubling questions about why.
    You use a pseudonym to argue about tech online. Someone who runs a large archive site probably faces death threats and legal issues related to the operation on a regular basis.
    Reply