Archive of Our Own offline following cyberattack

The fan fiction platform Archive of Our Own (AO3) has been offline since October 29 due to a security breach. The nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), which operates the site, confirmed the outage is the result of a cyberattack currently under investigation.

While the site remains down for maintenance, officials have stated that no stories, bookmarks, or kudos have been deleted. However, because the database contains usernames, email addresses, and encrypted passwords, users are being advised to change their passwords on other platforms if they use the same credentials.

The outage is expected to last between two and four weeks. In response to the downtime, the blogging platform Tumblr has reported a significant surge in new users, including a 75 percent increase among those aged 18 to 25, as fandom communities migrate to alternative spaces.