Is archive.org a security threat? My IT department thinks so

Posted by flunky_the_majestic@reddit | sysadmin | View on Reddit | 134 comments

I work for an organization that has a central IT department, which manages our workstations, and a software development department which develops and manages some SaaS products. I'm way more experienced than the IT team in the central office, but I'm focused on managing SaaS infrastructure now. They have made the decision that archive.org is dangerous because of their 2025 breach, and it is blocked from our computers. Probably a few times a month, someone on my team will complain that they have a legitimate need for it, such as competitive research, verifying the sanity of a customer, helping a customer recover some old data from sources beyond our control... whatever.... Our team has taken to using their own shadow IT hardware to circumvent this and other restrictions. I requested a review of the archive.org block policy. I brought up several products in our industry who have suffered breaches on par with archive.org. We can still access those sites, though. I was told that "Microsoft blocks it". and that the sites I brought up "have third-party audits that verify their security posture, while archive.org does not have any sort of security policies". To me, this sounds like decision makers who lack the experience to fully understand the policies they enforce. But, it has been a long time since I have managed users and workstations, so I can't be sure if I'm out of touch. Is archive.org really a threat?