AO3 was attacked

AO3 babygirl get behind us we got you

How did you fare during the great AO3 shutdown of 2023?

ALSO, I mentioned the name of the attacking group for educational purposes, but while talking about this online try not to mention or share their name; groups like this want to gain notoriety to add to their reputation. By spreading their organization's call card around it feeds the fire. Gotta pull a Voldemort on them.

Time Stamps:
0:00 - 4:07 AO3 Underwent a DDoS Attack
4:07 - 5:01 Thank You Volunteers!!!
5:01 - 7:10 How I Coped
7:10 - 8:33 AO3 Withdrawals and Other Sites
8:33 - 12:04 Who attacked AO3?
12:04 - 15:33 Why was AO3 attacked?
15:33 - 17:05 AO3's Future
17:05 - 17:56 How did you survive?

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Social Media:

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Thanks for watching!

[ColeyDoesThings]

How did you fare during the great AO3 shutdown of 2023?😵

ALSO, I mentioned the name of the attacking group for educational purposes, but while talking about this situation online try not to mention or share their name if you can help it; cyber terrorist groups like this want to gain notoriety to add to their reputation. By spreading their organization's call card around it feeds the fire.

Gotta pull a Voldemort on them; I just refer to them as ASS👌

[satuflower]

the fact that fanfic writers from each corner of the fandomverse put aside their differences to cope with the great Ao3 shutdown restores my faith in humanity

[LiveLaughLocklyle]

This would all be extremely funny if it weren’t absolutely horrifying.

[QuincyKGrace]

If the collective fandom of ao3 end up bringing down a cyber terrorism group because they’re getting in the way of their fics, I will literally die laughing

[phoebelyn.]

The fact they were trying to “protect the kids” while throwing the kids in a spiral 😭

[yumyellow]

the hackers: BECAUSE GAY FANFICS KILLED MY GRANDMA, OKAY?!?!

[Lost-Kid]

i find it funny that we can survive a 3 year long deadly pandemic without going outside but break under pressure and get overwhelmed within 28 hours when we can't access our fan creations
honestly *same*

[GiornoLovesDeathGrips]

Claim your 'I survived the great ao3 attack of 2023' badge here!

[thatonearoace]

As a fanfic writer this was terrifying because I almost ended up ACTUALLY FINISHING MY WIPS! Luckily it was fixed before I resorted to that though

[chari]

The fact that other companies suffered from weeks of this but Ao3 was back up within 28 hours was very funny to me. Do not mess with the mostly insane community that thrives off of fanfiction, we bite

Edit: wtf y’all I checked this two days ago and found 680 something I’ve never had this many likes before

Edit 2: FUYFUYGUYGCFGSFEZHUIBUIHUI I HIT 1K? I HIT 1K-

[catblue]

It’s the acting like “WD MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN!!!” But entirely willing to leave said children that are apparently in so much danger for a few thousand dollars, for me.

[notokay]

what AO3 said about the group:

"We'd also like to take a moment to reiterate that cybersecurity experts believe the group claiming responsibility for the ongoing DDoS attack is lying about their affiliation and reasons for attacking websites. We strongly encourage you to be skeptical of any statements from this group."


*AO3 staff believe that the group is lying about their affiliations, because first Sudan is in a fucking war now, why the fuck would they care about ao3.And it's like so random.. also they attacked other sites and apps apart from ao3 so their reason being anti-LGBt is likely false.*

the most likely theory is that they're 4-channers trolling.

[TigerWolfDemon]

As an old Tumblr rat I can assure you nothing is scarier than fandoms and truly attacking AO3 is a hornet's nest in beehive clothing. The only thing they could have done to make it worse is to attack swiftie or kpop stans directly as even gods know where not to tred

[lizz-the-dragon]

Fighting degeneracy? More like contributing to it. Seriously they spent all their time skills to attack a fanfiction site????

[ByOwlLight]

They targeted AO3 because it isn't a big corporation with a lot of robust security in place or the money to go after them. In other words, they picked on the smallest kid on the playground cuz that's the only one they're capable of bullying. It's kind of hilarious they're bragging about it like it is some grand accomplishment, like a dude acting all tough about going to jail for parking tickets.

[triangleghost_]

The fact that they used the term "lgbtq+" and "smuts" could imply that the call was coming from inside the house and frankly I find that terrifying

Edit: ok this actually blew up so I wanna clarify, it's specifically the term "smuts" that sets alarm bells off. Smut is a very common thing in the fanfic community but why wouldn't they use the term p0rn or p0rnography? Also, what scares me about it coming from inside is that someone in the fanfic community would willing get rid of their community's outlet. And also the fact they took the time to spell out the entire acronym? That's just odd idk.

[berlinasasinger]

Someone needs to make a T-shirt about this event saying: "I survived the DDoS attacks on Ao3, and all I got was this T-Shirt"

[maxwellgrimsley]

The fact that they were so concerned about lgbtq stories being dangerous and wrong and didn’t even mention the dead dove do not eat stories that are on that site speaks volumes. 💀

[roseyghost]

My experience with the AO3 attack was actually kind of funny because I didn’t even know it happened until afterwards. I had a few tabs already opened on Google so I could read fanfics offline since the pages were already loaded and I was just reading from those for the entirety of the attack. And then I saw people on tumblr talking about how they were barely getting through the pain of AO3 being down and I was like “huh what” so I basically was the only AO3 user I know who was just okay the whole time

[vixntrickzz]

I find it so funny that their supposed motives are "getting rid of degeneracy" but the result of their hacking was even MORE degeneracy because of the sheer amount of anonsudan x AO3 memefics