It’s not for sure, but one blogger wrote an article trying to track them down. They appear to be in Russia and may be affiliated with other sketchy black hat kind of stuff, but nothing is certain. Clearly the owner of archive today was upset by being investigated by a blogger, and started a harassment and DDOS campaign in response.

I myself use archive today quite a bit. I use a browser addon to get around paywalls which queries the archive (I also subscribe to a lot of news sources, but I am a news obsessive and can’t possibly afford to subscribe to all of them!) So I would be sad if they went away, but it would be great if someone could fork the archive or take it over.

I think a group of Wikipedia editors was already working to remove archive.today links where possible, moving them to waybackmachine or other alternatives when available. At least, several articles I watch had such activity. The thought was since archive today is being investigated by the FBI and may not continue as a going concern, it shouldn’t be woven in to Wikipedia. I personally agree with that sentiment. But this new issue of the Archive Today admin being sketchy and black hat in nature, using the site itself to conduct DDOS attacks, has made the process of moving more urgent.