Sanna. Aries. Born 1993. Asexual. Autistic. Demigirl/Genderflux. Swedish. Artist, writer and has a degree in game design. Nocturnal courier. Has something to do with foxes.
DDoS Attack Against AO3: Correcting Misinformation
Normally I don’t make any posts like this, but I have an interest in cybersecurity and sadly I’ve seen people are being really ignorant about this recent DDoS attack against the site AO3 (Archive of Our Own), so I thought I’d remind people of a few things:
Anonymous Sudan appears to have no actual link to Sudan at all, or to any previous hacktivist groups that once operated there. This masquerade is probably based in anti-immigration and other racist sentiments, and utilizing those sentiments in other people to scare people and set up Muslims and Sudanese people as a target. This should be obvious from the language used in their note, but this was already known prior to this particular attack.
This so-called Anonymous Sudan has actually been very active recently—remember that they claimed to attack Reddit, Flickr, Riot Games, a huge number of Microsoft web portals like OneDrive and Outlook, etc. before AO3, so AO3 was totally a logical target for them since they’ve gone after smaller entities before. DDoS attacks like this are easy for any script kiddie to set up, so it’s not weird that they’d go for a smaller target like this.
Honestly this group of posers probably just wants money, everybody. They sent AO3 a ransom note asking for Bitcoin (and just in case people don’t know, do not pay a ransom if at all possible if this ever happens to you).
My advice to people who’ve noticed this attack is two-fold: calm down since this is part of a larger pattern that has literally resulted in basically no loss for the end-user of any of the sites, and… I don’t really know a better way to put this, but don’t believe everything you read. A religiously-motivated hate group wouldn’t use terms like “LGBTQ+” and “smuts,” and it’s so blatantly obvious that the timing of every single one of these attacks is being used to smear Muslims and Sudanese people if you think about current events for like. One second. And if you look up Anonymous Sudan, you’ll see their string of attacks and how all experts know that they have nothing to do with Sudan at all. Even AO3 itself told everybody that the group is lying about their motivations… though I think I’d go further than that personally because even their name itself is almost certainly a total sham.
To be clear: this post isn’t targeted at anyone in particular. I’ve just seen a lot of people falling for this overall or not realizing this is part of a pattern, and I also wanted to remind everyone that this isn’t anything to be concerned about. What is something to be concerned about is not doing research or thinking critically and then unwittingly spreading racist ideas.
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.
I NEED YOU TO UNDERSTAND THAT I LOST MY SHIT AT THIS MOMENT. It’s the most emotionally constipated backhand compliment and paranoid control freak showing his love thing I HAVE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE.
He’s friends with Barry, Arthur, Diana, Ollie, that means something for Batman to say that, but then he’ll turn right around and say, “But I don’t trust their judgement for shit when it comes to my kid, who by the way, is clearly the best trained out of all you, because he’s the best period, and I’m not risking my precious son on your dumb sidekicks.”
HELP PLEASE HE’S THE WORST AND THE BEST HE LOVES HIS KID IN THE WORST POSSIBLE AND MOST HILARIOUS WAY
Am I enjoy Task Force Z? No. Is this absolutely underrated dynamic worth the read anyway? ABSOLUTELY YES. “Don’t try to be cute. You’re not that guy.” “No, I’m the sexy mysterious one.” HE SAYS WHILE CHIPMUNKING A MUFFIN, ALL RIGHT THEN, JASON, SURE.
All of the Batkids stopping in the middle of their petty bullshit fight with each other to help up a lady they knocked over after they just KICKED THEIR SIBLING INTO HER TO KNOCK HER DOWN, yeah, I’ll go ahead and absorb that into my belief system of the characters.
Jason being an asshole on purpose as misdirection or misdirection-of-a-misdirection (“I’ll say I have dreams about you so that you’ll think I’m a lying asshole, but I actually do have dreams about you.”)
Tim being AN ABSOLUTE FUCKING NERD and also a weird little gremlin man at the same time and I LOVE HIM
Tim calling him “Jason” like he’s not BFFs with the guy, but he isn’t really distancing himself or particularly afraid of Jason
Jason is trying to put distance between himself and Tim, calling him by his last name, but when the moment actually comes, he’s telling Tim to keep his head in the game because Jason doesn’t actually want him dead or anything
Jason being prickly about any mention of Batman and trying SO HARD to be cool and just not really achieving it, I am absolutely NOT buying his Mr. Cool Guy act here, like Tim is actually GETTING THE JOB DONE, while Jason just stands there and the only time he really talks is to be an asshole about other people.
AND IT’S EVERYTHING I DESERVE, especially with how Tim seems to have moved on and is more balanced, while Jason’s still kind of a mess about it all and NOM NOM NOM YES GIMME THIS.
every time i see a post talking about how alfred pennyworth failed bruce for not getting him into therapy as a kid i want to scream.
it did not exist. the idea that children could have PTSD was just starting to be discussed in the late 80s/early 90s at the FRINGE of child psychology, and then trauma therapy even for adults spent an unhelpful 2ish decades dominated by forced-conversation talk therapy. that’s a thing that is detrimental to trauma recovery, because if someone doesn’t feel safe or in control of the dialogue about their trauma and is repeatedly asked to describe their trauma when they’re uneasy, it COMPOUNDS TRAUMA AND FEELINGS OF DANGER.
when bruce was a kid, even the best psychs available would have had training that taught them kids bounce back, that kids don’t respond to or handle trauma the way adults do, and that any behaviors post-trauma were almost certainly unrelated mental illness.
i see this esp in fandom circles but a gentle reminder that therapy even when it’s good doesn’t fix everything. even if bruce had HAD access to good childhood PTSD therapy, he would still have grief, he would still potentially be socially awkward or withdrawn, he might have still decided to be Batman because it’s a comic book where being a vigilante isn’t as wild as it is irl.
therapy requires honesty, readiness, safety, sound application of theory, an accurate picture of life outside the therapy room (self-reporting is often flawed!), consistency, and more! it can help but it doesn’t erase trauma or grief. it’s dismissive of the history of trauma therapy to say an adult “should have” had a kid in a therapy approach that didn’t exist, and it’s dismissive of the actual work of therapy to act like therapy would have made everything ideal. bruce isn’t going to be a normal, well-adjusted adult because his parents were murdered in front of him. he could be happy! he could have coping skills! but honestly it would be weirder if he didn’t wrestle with residual trauma and grief throughout his life.
and maybe this is just because i love Batman, and love specifically Batman as a symbol/figure of hope and sacrifice and the belief that every life matters, but I don’t think the worst ending here is Bruce deciding to give up a lot of his time, energy, and health to work in Gotham AND then choose to parent a traumatized child and actively meet his needs. like you think the alternative is that Alfred is a better parent by getting him into non-existent therapy and then he stays comfortably wealthy at home and is just another rich dude? that’s the ideal version? the one who can’t help Dick Grayson because Dick Grayson wants to run away and murder a man?
anyway tl;dr alfred should have flaws, yes, but there’s a big gap between “flawed human parental figure” and “man who massively failed Bruce in multiple ways, one of which was not putting him in therapy.”
just fyi bc i don’t think i made it clear: even in the initial decade of acceptance of childhood PTSD, the approach would have been a therapist asking bruce to describe the night his parents died. over. and over. and over. and over.
because of the belief that discussing it would process the trauma.
there were kids in foster care in this era that flat-out refused to go to therapy or speak at all while there because therapy was them being asked to describe, in detail, exactly what the abuse was, on repeat. it hurt a LOT of people even while we were struggling to get better at treating them.
Concept: The Gotham Citizen app has a forum for posting candid photos of vigilantes and there’s an ongoing phenomenon where photos of Tim are impossibly gorgeous no matter the angle and photos of Dick (one of the most beautiful people in the entire world) look like when you take high-speed photos of Olympic athletes mid-sport
