Popular fanfiction platform Archive of Our Own (AO3) has been forced offline intermittently since Monday due to a wave of sustained distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. The attacks were allegedly perpetrated by a group demanding $30k worth of Bitcoin cryptocurrency as ransom to cease the attacks.
Five hours after initial reports of unknown problems with the immensely popular site, AO3 tweeted: “It looks like the Archive is under a DDoS attack causing the servers to fall over. Our volunteer sysadmins are working on countermeasures. Please be patient with us, we’ll be back!”
According to AO3, “a collective of religiously and politically motivated hackers” have claimed responsibility for the attacks. CybersecurityConnect said the group “Anonymous Sudan” is spouting hate speech towards LGBTQ+ and some erotic content on the site.
At the time of writing, AO3’s site is back online.
AO3 Faces DDoS Attacks
DDoS attacks spam a site with requests, overloading its servers and causing it to freeze for everyone.
AO3 had assured users that these attacks wouldn’t affect their data, nor is there a need for users to change their passwords or take any other action for their data’s security.
According to CybersecurityConnect, Anonymous Sudan has been active in recent days, targeting other platforms like Reddit, Tumblr, and a video game publisher with similar DDoS attacks.
“Any American company can be targeted, it doesn’t matter who and which company it is, if it’s American we will target it,” the group said in a Telegram post on July 9.
Anonymous Sudan Claims Responsibility
Anonymous Sudan has voiced opposition to what they perceive as “degeneracy” on AO3, such as LGBTQ+ and erotic content.
The group has threatened to keep the website down for weeks if a ransom payment is not made.
However, AO3 and cybersecurity experts have cast doubt on the credibility and motives of Anonymous Sudan, suggesting that they are lying about their affiliation and reasons for attacking websites.
According to Flashpoint, a threat intelligence vendor, Anonymous Sudan has been active since January 2023, claiming responsibility for DDoS attacks against Microsoft and various companies around Europe, but it appears that the group has no credible connection to the country of Sudan or the previous Anonymous group that operated within it.
AO3 has warned its users to view the group’s statements with skepticism and has stated that it does not condone anti-Muslim sentiments under any circumstances.
“We do not condone anti-Muslim sentiments under any circumstances. Additionally, to reiterate: cybersecurity experts believe the group claiming responsibility is lying about their affiliation and reasons for attacking websites,” AO3 tweeted on Tuesday.
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