Hacking group Anonymous Sudan have this week affected a number of high-profile websites in a wave of Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks.
On Monday (10th July) the hacking gang, which are widely thought to be a pro-Russian outfit, disrupted access to Reddit for 2 hours in s DDoS attack. In another attack, the gang claimed Tumblr as one of their victims.
The latest attack has taken fan-fiction website Archive of our Own (AO3) offline for a much lengthier time.
The administrators of AO3 are battling to keep the website up and have managed to restore intermittent access.
Repeat visits to the site occasionally result in access to the website, whereas other visits result in a website with no style sheets, or a 400 Bad Request.
The Websites official Twitter account confirms the DDoS is causing issues and that the admins are working as hard as possible to restore services.
The Telegram channel for Anonymous Sudan states the reasons behind the attack on AO3. The gang claim that the site is under attack as part of the gangs ongoing campaign which targets companies registered in the United States, but also that they are against all forms of degeneracy and that AO3 is “Full of disgusting smuts and other LGBTQ+ and NSFW things”
At the time of writing, the AO3 website is now back functioning as normal.
Who are Anonymous Sudan?
The story of Anaonymous Sudan is not an easy one to tell, as there is conflicting reports as to whether they are a stand-alone gang, an off-shoot of another gang, or a fake gang created by Russian actors in an attempt to sow confusion.
I wrote a piece about this gang in an earlier post which can be read here