July 10, 2023 - (18:00 UTC)
The Archive is experiencing some issues (as many of you have noticed).
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!
A DDoS attack is when an attacker attempts to knock a site offline by overwhelming it with requests. Data is not compromised in a DDoS attack, so there is no need to change your password at this time or worry about your works being lost.
A group presenting themselves as a collective of religiously and politically motivated hackers has claimed responsibility for the DDoS attack. This group has attacked other sites before, including those of government organizations and large corporations. However, cybersecurity experts do not believe the group is honest about their motivation, so we urge caution in believing any reasoning this group provides for targeting AO3.
As part of our efforts to help keep the site up, you might find that you get "Retry later" errors more often when searching or filtering works or bookmarks. Don't worry, just go a little slower, or try again in a few minutes! These are temporary measures. Normal use of the site is fine -- you don't have to avoid using AO3 if it's currently up for you.
Our volunteers are continuing to work hard on this issue! We appreciate your patience and support in the meantime.
Date: 22:43 UTC July 10, 2023
We've changed our approach slightly, so you might now see error messages other than "Retry later," such as 429 (too many requests), 400 (bad request), or 503 (service unavailable).
Please do continue to access the site if it's up for you, and feel free to download some works for offline reading in case of further downtime!
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.
Date: 02:16 UTC July 11, 2023
