Cyber Attack Causing Major Outage at British Library

The British Library is suffering an ongoing cyber attack at its London and Yorkshire locations with its website down at the time of writing and only able to offer a restricted service.

It comes as the Toronto Public Library is also reporting a cyber security incident.

The British Library is updating the situation on X/Twitter where it said it is "continuing to experience a major technology outage as a result of a cyber incident, which we’re investigating with @NCSC [the National Cyber Security Centre] and other specialists."

It reported that the attack is affecting its website, online systems and services, and some onsite services, although its buildings remain fully open and many services are still available onsite including:

• Reading Rooms (for personal study)
• collection items ordered to view in the Reading Rooms on or before 30 October
• very limited, manual collection item ordering in London via our printed catalogues, for items stored in St Pancras only
• Reader Registration, currently only able to issue temporary passes

Public wifi access is now back after initially being down, and tickets to its latest exhibition Fantasy: Realms of Imagination can still be used but tickets can only be bought onsite with cash. Other queries are being fielded via its X/Twitter page.