ArchiveBox

ArchiveBox is an open-source self-hosted web archiving application that downloads and preserves websites, social media posts, and web content to local storage. It captures HTML, screenshots, PDFs, and media files, creating a comprehensive local archive of web content that remains accessible even after the original source is deleted.

For OSINT investigators, self-hosted web archiving provides crucial evidence preservation capabilities that address the ephemeral nature of online content. Unlike depending on the Wayback Machine or other external archive services, ArchiveBox creates investigator-controlled local archives with full chain-of-custody documentation.

Evidence preservation workflows using ArchiveBox enable investigators to systematically archive all web-based evidence discovered during an investigation — social media profiles, forum posts, news articles, fraudulent websites, and other content that may be removed before the investigation concludes. Local archives with timestamps document exactly what content was visible when.

The self-hosted nature of ArchiveBox means sensitive investigation materials are not uploaded to third-party services — content from sensitive cases can be preserved locally without creating external exposure risks. This is critical for legal and national security investigations where evidence confidentiality is paramount.

Batch archiving capability allows investigators to provide a list of URLs and have ArchiveBox systematically capture all of them with timestamps, creating a structured archive of an entire investigation's web evidence in one operation.

Multiple capture formats (HTML, screenshot, PDF, WARC) ensure that content is preserved in formats usable for different purposes — legal documentation, technical analysis, and long-term archiving all benefit from different format choices.

For court-ready evidence, ArchiveBox's timestamps, file hashes, and structured capture logs provide the metadata needed to authenticate archived content in legal proceedings.

Document all ArchiveBox archive configurations, capture dates, source URLs, and resulting archive hashes for investigation evidence records.