IT之家 November 3 news: The fan-creation platform Archive of Our Own (AO3) recently suddenly entered a downtime maintenance state. The nonprofit organization OTW (Organization for Transformative Works), which operates AO3, confirmed on its official status page that the platform detected a cybersecurity attack incident and has currently urgently shut down the website in order to carry out an investigation and take protective measures.
Regarding the issue users care about most—whether works and personal data have been lost—AO3 officials stated in the latest announcement that no AO3 data has been deleted at present, and data such as works posted by users, bookmarks (Bookmarks), and kudos (Kudos) are all intact.
However, regarding account security, officials said it is currently still impossible to confirm whether the user database has been stolen. For reference, the AO3 database contains usernames, email addresses, IP addresses, and hashed passwords. Officials remind all users to remain vigilant. If the same password as used on AO3 has been used on other websites, it is recommended to change it immediately to reduce the risk of accounts being further attacked.
At present, AO3 is expected to need at least two weeks to restore service, and at most it may take four weeks. However, officials also said that the website recovery time remains uncertain. During maintenance, the platform may resume operation early with some functions limited, and the possibility of temporarily shutting down the website again after service is restored cannot be ruled out.