What Is archive.org?

Archive (archive.org) is a digital library similar to OpenLibrary. Archive.org also archives the internet with a tool called the Wayback Machine. As of May 2023, the site archive.org gets an estimated 120.9 million monthly views according to SimilarWeb. The Wayback Machine estimates that archive.org was founded on January 26, 1997. The Internet Archive has saved the domain archive.org 688,812 times between January 26, 1997 and June 21, 2023.

Is archive.org Safe?

I analyzed archive.org for malware and malicious content to check if it was legit or a scam. Here are the results:

I checked the site archive.org on the online malware scanner Sucuri and it returned as a medium security risk. You can see the same here: Sucuri scan for the site archive.org.

Archive.org Sucuri results

See also: How To Stay Safe Online

Sucuri says the site archive.org is a medium security risk because of a 409 Conflict on the URL http://archive.org/create and TLS issues (Password input field detected on an unencrypted HTTP page and No redirect from HTTP to HTTPS found).

Some hardening improvements can be made:

  • Missing security header for ClickJacking Protection. Alternatively, you can use Content-Security-Policy: frame-ancestors 'none'.
  • Missing security header to prevent Content Type sniffing.
  • Missing Content-Security-Policy directive. We recommend to add the following CSP directives (you can use default-src if all values are the same): script-src, object-src, base-uri, frame-src
  • Default server banners displayed. Your site is displaying your web server default banners.

However, these hardening improvements don’t impact the Sucuri grade.

To check this further I ran a parasite scan with Unmask Parasites on the site archive.org and it says the page is clean. You can see the same here: Unmask Parasites scan for the site archive.org.

I also checked the site archive.org on VirusTotal and it isn’t flagged as malicious. You can see the same here: VirusTotal scan for the site archive.org.

Archive.org VirusTotal results

In conclusion, Sucuri says the site archive.org is a medium security risk because of a 409 Conflict and TLS issues. Unmask Parasites says the site archive.org is clean of parasites. And VirusTotal and Sucuri say the domain archive.org isn’t blacklisted or malicious. Overall grade: Relatively Safe.

Links and Profiles

Website: archive.org

References

1. SimilarWeb – archive.org

2. Wayback Machine – archive.org