Archive of Our Own (AO3) could remain unavailable for up to four weeks after its nonprofit operator detected a security incident affecting the Fanfiction platform.
The Organization for Transformative Works (OTW) said on October 30 that it was keeping the site offline while investigating the incident and determining its scope. AO3 initially went down for maintenance on October 29, when the organization said the work could take at least 12 hours.
OTW confirmed that the outage was not caused by the deletion of site data. Fanworks, bookmarks, kudos and other content remain safe, according to the organization.
However, OTW has not ruled out unauthorized access to AO3’s user database. It said it does not currently believe the database was stolen, but the investigation is still ongoing. The database may include usernames, email addresses, IP addresses and hashed passwords.
OTW said it does not collect users’ real names, and that donor information is kept separately from AO3 accounts. The organization advised users who reused their AO3 passwords on other websites to change those credentials. Although the passwords are stored in hashed form, weak or reused passwords could still be vulnerable to cracking.
The OTW status page estimates that AO3 will remain offline for at least two weeks and potentially as long as four weeks. The site could return sooner in a limited state, with some features unavailable or with the archive operating in read-only mode.
The organization warned that even a partial reopening could be followed by further unexpected downtime as recovery work continues. OTW said it would provide updates through its official channels, but may be unable to respond to individual user inquiries during the investigation.
Sources: Dexerto.