Internet Archive, Wikipedia outages: What we know
Two of the internet's most valuable resources, the Internet Archive and Wikipedia, went down for users on Wednesday morning.
On Wednesday morning, two of the internet's most prominent information repositories faced significant outages, causing widespread disruption for users. The Internet Archive and Wikipedia both experienced problems, with visitors reporting connection timeouts and inaccessible websites. The Wikimedia Foundation, which operates Wikipedia, has since confirmed the issue is related to newly discovered security vulnerabilities in PHP, the programming language that underpins the platform.
This vulnerability affects all known versions of PHP and is not specific to the Wikimedia Foundation alone. All Foundation-supported systems, including volunteer-run ones, are impacted, and precautionary measures have been taken by taking down several other systems as a precaution until they can be safely patched. The Internet Archive, host of the popular Wayback Machine, also confirmed the outage, with its website returning connection timeout errors.
While the status of the two platforms remains uncertain, their outage highlights the critical role these sites play in preserving and providing access to online information.
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