'Totally and utterly bereft' — the devastating repercussions of the British Library cyber attack

You expect some silence in a library. But not this much. The reading rooms of the British Library near King’s Cross are usually home to busy writers and academics working on their next tomes, but on a visit this week, most of the desks were empty. They have been much quieter ever since October, when a cyber attack by Rhysida, a ransomware group thought to be Russian-speaking, disabled the catalogue and computer systems.

And there’s been little good news for users of the UK's best-known library ever since. It was revealed this week that the problem is set to drag on for up to a year, and that rebuilding the database will drain 40 per cent of the British Library’s reserves, between six and seven million pounds. In response, the head of the library yesterday put out his first apology for the chaos.

It’s a warning about the seriousness of