British Library Suffers Major Technical Outage Following Cyberattack

The British Library is still reeling from a major IT outage caused by a cyber incident that impacted its digital services on October 28.

According to its official statement on X (formerly Twitter), the ongoing outage continues to affect its website, phone lines, and services on site in London and Yorkshire.

The library’s buildings remain fully operational, and few services continue to be available onsite, like:

• Temporary Reader Registration passes.
• Reading Rooms for personal study.
• Collection items ordered to view in the Reading Rooms on or before October 30.
• Very limited, manual collection item ordering in London via our printed catalogs, for items stored in St Pancras only.

Moreover, the Fantasy exhibition and public spaces will continue to operate as normal, and tickets for the events can be bought on site with cash payments.

The statement did not disclose if any personal or financial information of employees or customers had been accessed during the incident.

Although the library is yet to share the details of the incident or the threat actors behind it, to estimate the severity of the incident and its impact, it’s investigating the incident with national agency and third-party cybersecurity experts.

‘’We are continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber incident, which we’re investigating with NCSC and other specialists.’’

The British Library apart from being the national library of UK, is also one of the largest libraries in the world. Located in London, its collection is estimated to contain around 200 items, including music scores, manuscripts, maps, philatelic items, drawings, sound recordings, and much more.

On October 28, another public library, the Toronto Public Library suffered a similar cyber security incident, ‘’the following services are unavailable: your account, map passes and digital collections. Public computers and printing services at our branches are also unavailable,’’ the official statement read.