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Lawsuit Accuses Anna's Archive of Hacking WorldCat, Stealing 2.2 TB Data (torrentfreak.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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American nonprofit OCLC is known globally for its leading database of bibliographic records, WorldCat. A few months ago, many of these records were posted publicly by the shadow library search engine, Anna's Archive. OCLC believes that this is the result of a year-long hack and, with a lawsuit filed at an Ohio federal court, it demands damages.

WorldCat Sues Anna’s Archive

It is no secret that publishers fiercely oppose the search engine’s stated goals. The same also applies to OCLC, which has now elevated its concerns into a full-blown lawsuit, filed this month at a federal court in Ohio.

The complaint accuses Washington citizen Maria Dolores Anasztasia Matienzo and several “John Does” of operating the search engine and scraping WorldCat data. The scraping is equated to a cyberattack by OCLC and started around the time Anna’s Archive launched.

“Beginning in the fall of 2022, OCLC began experiencing cyberattacks on WorldCat.org and OCLC’s servers that significantly affected the speed and operations of WorldCat.org, other OCLC products and services, and OCLC’s servers and network infrastructure,” OCLC’s complaint notes.

“These attacks continued throughout the following year, forcing OCLC to devote significant time and resources toward non-routine network infrastructure enhancements, maintenance, and troubleshooting.”

The non-profit says that it spent roughly $68 million over the past two years developing and enhancing WorldCat records, which are an essential part of its operation. Having a copy of the data publicly available through Anna’s Archive is a direct threat to its business.

OCLC claims that Anna’s Archive unmasked itself as the “perpetrator of the attacks on WorldCat.org” when it publicly announced its scraping effort. This includes a detailed blog post the operators published on the matter, encouraging the public to use the scraped data.

In addition to harvesting data from WorldCat.org, the defendants are also accused of obtaining and using credentials of a member library to access WorldCat Discovery Services. This opened the door to yet more detailed records that are not available on WorldCat.org.

OCLC says that it spent significant time and resources to address the ‘attacks’ on its systems.

“These hacking attacks materially affected OCLC’s production systems and servers, requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems’ performance for customers.

“To respond to these ongoing attacks, OCLC spent over 1.4 million dollars on its systems’ infrastructure and devoted nearly 10,000 employee hours to the same,” the complaint adds.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Here are the court filings if anyone would like to read them:

https://archive.org/details/gov.uscourts.ohsd.287709/

The following is a link to the docket (which the above link draws from), so people can follow the progress of the lawsuit:

https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/68157923/oclc-online-computer-library-center-inc-v-annas-archive/

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (3 children)

As to how Anna's Archive accomplished their data scraping, this is what OCLC is claiming (see page 62-63):

These attacks were accomplished with bots (automated software applications) that “scraped” and harvested data from WorldCat.org and other WorldCat®-based research sites and that called or pinged the server directly. These bots were initially masked to appear as legitimate search engine bots from Bing or Google.

To scrape or harvest the data on WorldCat.org, the bots searched WorldCat.org results, running a script based on OCN for individual JavaScript Object Notation, or “JSON,” records. As a result, WorldCat® data including freely accessible and enriched data, such as OCNs, were scraped from individual results on WorldCat.org.

The bots also harvested data from WorldCat.org by pretending to be an internet browser, directly calling or “pinging” OCLC’s servers, and bypassing the search, or user interface, of WorldCat.org. More robust WorldCat® data was harvested directly from OCLC’s servers, including enriched data not available through the WorldCat.org user interface.

Finally, WorldCat® data was harvested from a member’s website incorporating WorldCat® Discovery Services, a subscription-based variation of WorldCat.org that is available only to a member’s patrons. Again, the hacker pinged OCLC’s servers to harvest WorldCat® records directly from the servers. To do this through WorldCat® Discovery Services/FirstSearch, the hacker obtained and used the member’s credentials to authenticate the requests to the server as a member library.

From WorldCat® Discovery Services, hackers harvested 2 million richer WorldCat® records that included data not available in WorldCat.org. This hacking method resulted in the harvesting of some of OCLC’s most proprietary fields of WorldCat® data.

These hacking attacks materially affected OCLC’s production systems and servers, requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems’ performance for customers. To respond to these ongoing attacks, OCLC spent over 1.4 million dollars on its systems’ infrastructure and devoted nearly 10,000 employee hours to the same.

Despite OCLC’s best efforts, OCLC’s customers experienced many significant disruptions in paid services during the aforementioned period as a result of the attacks on WorldCat.org, requiring OCLC to create system workarounds to ensure services functioned.

During this time, customers threatened and likely did cancel their products and services with OCLC due to these disruptions.

Because OCLC had to combat these persistent hacking attacks, OCLC was forced to divert existing personnel and resources from OCLC’s other products and services. As a result, OCLC’s development and improvements to other products and services were delayed and limited.

OCLC has devoted, at various times, ten or more employees to respond to and mitigate the harm from these attacks from October 2022 to present.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

None of this is "hacking"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

the hacker obtained and used the member’s credentials to authenticate the requests to the server as a member library.

Hacking is the act of breaking into a computer system without authorization or exceeding authorized access.

This part could be hacking. Not that I care and think this is frivolous.

requiring around-the-clock efforts from November 2022 to March 2023 to attempt to limit service outages and maintain the production systems’ performance for customers.

Doesn't major hosting require 24/7 monitoring anyway? Like they should have been doing this for more than just 11/22 to 3/23.

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