Cybersecurity snafu sends British Library back to the Dark Ages

The British Library has confirmed to The Register that a "cyber incident" is nan origin of a "major" multi-day IT outage.

The societal media mouthpiece for nan Library began reporting issues connected nan greeting of October 28, saying its website and services astatine nan St Pancras tract successful cardinal London, including Wi-Fi access, were affected.

The British Library said successful a post to its X relationship that it expected nan issues to persist for "the adjacent fewer days."

Subsequent updates confirmed telephone lines and on-site services successful some St Pancras and Yorkshire were down, including nan library's website, which remains inaccessible astatine nan clip of writing.

"The British Library is experiencing a awesome exertion outage, arsenic a consequence of a cyber incident," it told The Register.

"This is affecting online systems and services, our website, and on-site services including our Reading Rooms. We are investigating nan incident pinch nan support of nan National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and cybersecurity specialists.

"We are very grateful for nan support and knowing we person had from our users, staff, and partners.

"The Library's sites stay afloat unfastened to nan nationalist and specifications connected nan services that stay disposable tin beryllium recovered via @britishlibrary connected X."

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According to a source, nan rumor started astatine astir 07:30 connected October 28 and was successful portion owed to "major issues" pinch its VMware ESXi servers "that person made astir each their VMs unavailable."

We approached nan British Library to corroborate these reports and to elaborate connected nan quality of nan information incident, but it has not responded.

London's celebrated library, location to Magna Carta, is still unfastened to visitors but is only accepting rate payments owed to its ongoing exertion issues.

Its reference rooms stay unfastened for individual study, but individuals will request to either activity without net entree aliases usage different connectivity options specified arsenic mobile hotspots.

Other services stay unfastened but successful constricted capacity. Individuals tin cod orders, but only those made earlier October 26, and location is "very limited" ordering of postulation items astatine nan St Pancras site.

"We are moving to resoluteness these issues arsenic a matter of urgency and will beryllium updating users via our societal media channels," it said. ®