Yes, Ao3 Is Down Because Of A Cybersecurity Attack.

Honestly if you have the money to next donation time you should. Sending all my support to the volunteers working tirelessly at ao3. 🩵🩵🩵🩵

WE LOVE YOU GUYS!!

We're back!

However, we may need to do some work to optimize our shiny new Cloudflare setup -- we'll keep you updated on any issues or downtime.

July 11, 2023 - 16:35 UTC

+when it does come back don’t forget to send ur love to the writers to remind them ur still there.

Also send all ur support to the volunteers trying to stop the attack they must be exhausted.

I mean, I do reblog a lot of “haha ao3 down I guess we die” jokes but actually the fax are

It will come back

We will be survive it’s absence, even though it might be hard

All fear-mongering about it’s absence will just make the hackers win

The hackers will tire out soon (ddos attacks cost money and resources to maintain)

Go outside and touch grass

I’ll go outside and touch grass

Love and peace to us ao3 girlies

Literally

+ Sudan is in the middle of a civil war right now

Drew my uncle cause why not

Fox Tears

I really hope the ao3 people are getting sleep and are eating good. We love you guys honestly ❤️❤️❤️

y'know what, ao3 appreciation post cause these people out there doing amazing work for no monetary compensation

literally so many of us love ao3, please show support for these guys <3

DDoS Attack Against AO3: Correcting Misinformation

Normally I don't make any posts like this, but I have an interest in cybersecurity and sadly I've seen people are being really ignorant about this recent DDoS attack against the site AO3 (Archive of Our Own), so I thought I'd remind people of a few things:

Anonymous Sudan appears to have no actual link to Sudan at all, or to any previous hacktivist groups that once operated there. This masquerade is probably based in anti-immigration and other racist sentiments, and utilizing those sentiments in other people to scare people and set up Muslims and Sudanese people as a target. This should be obvious from the language used in their note, but this was already known prior to this particular attack.

This so-called Anonymous Sudan has actually been very active recently—remember that they claimed to attack Reddit, Flickr, Riot Games, a huge number of Microsoft web portals like OneDrive and Outlook, etc. before AO3, so AO3 was totally a logical target for them since they've gone after smaller entities before. DDoS attacks like this are easy for any script kiddie to set up, so it's not weird that they'd go for a smaller target like this.

Honestly this group of posers probably just wants money, everybody. They sent AO3 a ransom note asking for Bitcoin (and just in case people don't know, do not pay a ransom if at all possible if this ever happens to you).

My advice to people who've noticed this attack is two-fold: calm down since this is part of a larger pattern that has literally resulted in basically no loss for the end-user of any of the sites, and... I don't really know a better way to put this, but don't believe everything you read. A religiously-motivated hate group wouldn't use terms like "LGBTQ+" and "smuts," and it's so blatantly obvious that the timing of every single one of these attacks is being used to smear Muslims and Sudanese people if you think about current events for like. One second. And if you look up Anonymous Sudan, you'll see their string of attacks and how all experts know that they have nothing to do with Sudan at all. Even AO3 itself told everybody that the group is lying about their motivations... though I think I'd go further than that personally because even their name itself is almost certainly a total sham.

To be clear: this post isn't targeted at anyone in particular. I've just seen a lot of people falling for this overall or not realizing this is part of a pattern, and I also wanted to remind everyone that this isn't anything to be concerned about. What is something to be concerned about is not doing research or thinking critically and then unwittingly spreading racist ideas.

Is Naruto Uzumaki autism coded or am I projecting onto him a little….