WHAT DO I DO NOW??

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

Fox Tears

Watched Ponyo and cried cause it was so cute wtf

Yes, Ao3 is down because of a cybersecurity attack.

Yes, the group is claiming to be Sudanese Muslims (Sudan Anonymous). No, this is not true.

This group has been identified as a Russian hacker group intent on sowing dissent between the world under the guise of “strengthening Middle East relations”. They targeted Ao3 because of its pro-LGBTQIA+ stories. Again, they are Russians sowing anger.

Do NOT be Islamophobic. Do NOT use this as an opportunity to whine about how you didn’t have time to finish reading a fic.

Ao3 is run by volunteers who are currently under siege by Russian hackers. Take this time to step back from the site, appreciate their work, write your own fics, or read a physical book.

If I see ANY Islamophobic rhetoric by any of my followers, I will pop your dumbass into my shit list and block you into the high heavens.

Current AO3 news from Facebook group:

ADMIN: “Just a few things. Yes, the attacks are still happening so site availability will be spotty at best. This is NOT an attack on the actual content. All stories, user data, etc are safe. DDOS attacks basically overwhelm the servers with requests to the point they cannot handle the load and failover. DDOS attacks last until one of two things happens, either the person/group gets bored and moves on to a new target. Or the site owner finds a way to fortify the servers against the attack. That means this could last for a while. With that in mind, let’s all try to keep the panic, humorous or otherwise to a minimum. It’s annoying and frustrating, certainly, but it’s not the end of the world. The site will eventually be back, it’s just going to take time and patience.” In short: - Our content is safe. - Our user data, stories etc are safe. - It’s a DDOS attack meaning it’s basically an attempt at overwhelming the servers, meaning: - DON’T KEEP REFRESHING THE AO3 PAGE!!! - It will last for a while, but there is no need to panic. Copied from one of the reblogs: “To simplify:A DoS or DDoS attack is analogous to a group of people crowding the entry door of a shop, making it hard for legitimate customers to enter, thus disrupting trade and losing the business money.” Also, YES, KEEP REBLOGGING to let people know! The less of us trying to reload the page the better! In the meantime, this is basically me:

Edit again, because this little post got a life of its own and now I feel like Pippin lighting the beacon of Minas Tirith :D

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

I’m loving the chainsaw man manga it’s really cool and a great read. I’m definitely gonna buy more of them lol

I’m reading a book about finding forgiveness and it’s making a lot of sense lol

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.