The popular fan fiction page Archive of Our Own — often referred to as AO3 — was hit with an apparent cyberattack on Monday, stranding amateur writers and millions of readers addicted to their unofficial stories based on popular franchises.
The cyberattack appeared to be over by Tuesday morning, though the website still experienced some outages and hiccups as AO3 looked to repair the damage caused by the hack.
But users nonetheless rejoiced when they could log back in for their fix of Barbie, Batman or Bobby Flay fanfic. Or their Don Lemon/Tucker Carlson erotica. AO3 truly has something for everyone.
Here’s a breakdown about the website and what happened to it this week.
What is AO3?
The website, which was founded in 2009, hosts millions of fan-created stories, videos, art and podcasts about characters pulled from pop culture. The collection of stories range from family-friendly to R-rated.
Advertisem*nt
AO3′s database includes about 11 million works based on 59,000 “fandoms,” which include just about every intellectual property you can think of as well as real-life personalities such as Queen Elizabeth II (perhaps in a crossover with Pope Francis and George Takei.) Every story is tagged and categorized according to fandom, trope and alternate universe.
The website won the Hugo Award for best related work in 2019, a significant milestone since the Hugo is one of the biggest honors in sci-fi and fantasy writing.
The company is owned by the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), a fan-run nonprofit that defends fan-fiction works from copyright complaints. The site is almost completely funded through donations.
Fanfic and LGBTQ community
The website has at least 5.9 million users as of July.
Advertisem*nt
Many of them are fan fiction writers, who craft unofficial stories based on popular works of fiction as well as real-life celebrities. Visit and you’ll see stories about an alternate universe where Pat Sajak and Alex Trebek host a game show called “Wheel of Jeopardy,” as well as one where Sonic the Hedgehog listens to Taylor Swift’s music. The site’s openness to different kinds of identities has helped it gain an especially huge reputation among LGBTQ readers and writers.
Anyone can visit the website (when it isn’t hacked) to read stories, but users who want to write have to receive an invitation to create an account, which can take anywhere from days to months.
“This archive is a permanent, panfandom place for fanworks, built by fans for fans,” the website reads.
Understandably, AO3′s fans can be pretty passionate, which explains the huge outcry on social media when it went down.
How hackers targeted the site
The platform said on its official Twitter account that it was hit on Monday by denial-of-service attacks, where malicious software is used to overwhelm a server with traffic. This led to the site going offline for several hours.
Advertisem*nt
No data was compromised in the cyberattack, which means users don’t need to worry about changing their passwords or account information, according to AO3. But users might continue to experience error messages across the site as AO3 attempts to ward off future attacks.
Users of AO3 who spoke to The Washington Post said the main concern surrounded losing previously written material — which can represent years of writing for some authors. One series on the site, titled “Avengers: Infinite Wars,” was first published in November 2020 and currently has 103 chapters, with more than 1.4 million words written and over 94,000 reads.
According to a report from CybersecurityConnect, an anonymous group claimed credit for the attack, saying in a hom*ophobic Telegram post that A03 was targeted because of its “disgusting smuts.” The group, which previously claimed responsibility for cyberattacks against Microsoft and other organizations throughout Europe, reportedly demanded that AO3 pay a $30,000 ransom to end the attack.
Advertisem*nt
But AO3′s operators said in a tweet that experts don’t believe the group — which they called “religiously and politically motivated hackers” — was actually responsible for the attack.
“View the group’s statements with skepticism,” the tweet said.
AO3 back online
The term “AO3 is back” began trending nationally on Twitter as writers championed its apparent return on Tuesday. The company’s official Twitter page said it would inform users if there is any additional downtime to come.
“We expect things to slowly improve as our dedicated volunteer sysadmins continue to take measures against the attack,” OTW, the website’s parent company, said in a statement to The Post.
