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Alexandra Elbakyan, founder of the scholarly piracy website Sci-Hub, is suspected of working with Russian intelligence officials to steal confidential research and military secrets from American universities.
According to The Washington Post, Elbakyan, nicknamed the Robin Hood of science, is currently under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice for suspected criminal acts and espionage.
Elbakyan denies any wrongdoing, but scholarly publishers such as Elsevier have used news of her investigation to call on academic institutions to block access to Sci-Hub -- not because the site is illegal, but because it poses a security threat. Several large publishers, including Elsevier, have successfully sued Sci-Hub for mass copyright infringement in recent years. The Sci-Hub repository contains more than 80 million research articles, including a large proportion of Elsevier's catalog.
Attempts to block the site completely through legal measures have not been successful. New links to the site (some listed on Wikipedia) keep being created. Now it seems that publishers such as Elsevier are taking a new approach -- asking users to boycott the site because of security concerns.
“The Washington Post story confirms that Sci-Hub is a malicious site being used for nefarious purposes,” said an Elsevier blog post published in late December. The publisher advised universities to block all websites associated with Sci-Hub.
PSI, a company based in Britain that offers tools and services to protect scholarly copyright, maintains a list of web addresses associated with Sci-Hub, which institutions can download and use to block access to the site on campus.
Andrew Pitts, CEO and co-founder of PSI, said that so far, few U.S. institutions have downloaded the block list. Pitts, who has been writing about Sci-Hub’s links to Russian military intelligence for several years, said he struggled to understand why universities are not taking more immediate steps to protect their networks. “This is a matter of urgency,” he said.
PSI’s research suggests that Sci-Hub has stolen log-in credentials from 373 universities in 39 countries, including more than 150 institutions in the U.S., said Pitts. The credentials were likely stolen through phishing attacks, he said. Sci-Hub browser extensions could also be used to track user activity and steal personal information, he said.
Brandon Butler, director of information policy at the University of Virginia Library, said, “Clearly Sci-Hub is not a legitimate organization. Their activity is sketchy, and we know they are based in Russia.” But he added that the “investigation is still an investigation; nothing has been proven yet.”
If the investigation found concrete evidence that Sci-Hub is linked to the theft of U.S. military secrets, Butler said, he would “give the matter more serious attention.”
Right now, the University of Virginia is not specifically discouraging academics from using Sci-Hub, said Butler. “We have two-factor authentication on everything. If someone attempted to log in using my credentials, my phone would ping,” he said.
“Philosophically, I feel Sci-Hub is a foreseeable side effect of the publisher business model. There’s always going to be a black market for paywalled content,” said Butler. He added that the opportunity for Sci-Hub to steal university credentials wouldn’t exist if academics didn’t have to provide credentials to access paywalled content. “That’s a risk that wouldn’t exist in a full open-access world,” he said.
Jim O’Donnell, university librarian at the Arizona State University Library, said that news of the investigation of Elbakyan had not changed his views on Sci-Hub.
“We are very aware of Sci-Hub. They make assertions about their business practices that cannot be verified -- they’re very untransparent,” he said. But the ASU Library does not tell academics and students to specifically avoid Sci-Hub, nor has it blocked the site. “Our advice to users is that they should abide by the law and follow our university policies,” he said.
The investigation into Elbakyan has “created more smoke, metaphorically speaking. But all we’re doing is a little more coughing,” said O’Donnell. He added, “We observe, we watch, we wait.”
Joe Esposito, a scholarly publishing consultant, said some librarians have been “dismissive” of PSI’s claims because the company is looking to promote its services. “I have no reason to think that they’re lying. But the amount of chatter seems to be way out ahead of the facts,” he said. “I think it’s true that an investigation is taking place, but we don’t yet know the outcome.”
Elbakyan has previously stated that the university credentials Sci-Hub uses to access paywalled content and download millions of research papers were volunteered by academics -- a statement that is disputed by PSI and some publishers.
Even if Sci-Hub is not obtaining credentials illegally, Esposito noted that one organization “hoarding credentials” has “dangerous implications.”
“Sci-Hub could easily be a target for hackers,” said Esposito. “People talk about Sci-Hub hacking universities, but what happens if Sci-Hub gets attacked?”
