Fan fiction archive AO3 is back after more than two weeks down due to a security incident

Archive of Our Own (AO3), the fan fiction archive run by the non-profit Organization for Transformative Works (OTW), came back online on Sunday, November 15, according to the update posted at 08:00 (UTC) on the organization's official status page. The site went down for maintenance on October 29, and the following day the OTW said it had detected evidence of a security incident.

The OTW explains that it has temporarily disabled some features in order to reopen earlier than the four-week timeframe it had announced: user and collection icons are not displayed, external works cannot be imported and works can only be downloaded in HTML format. It adds that, due to traffic volume, the site may intentionally take longer to load.

According to the organization, no AO3 data has been deleted and automatic draft deletion will remain paused until November 29. The OTW says it has no reason to believe the user database was compromised, although it cannot rule it out, and recommends changing passwords, including on other sites where the password was reused. That database contains username, email address, IP address and a hashed version of the password, according to the October 30 update.

The OTW gives no details about the incident or the measures taken and says it is working with a security firm to analyze it. AO3 hosts more than 18 million works and is run by a team of about 1,000 volunteers, according to OTW co-founder Rebecca Tushnet speaking to Today.