When I was theorizing about the future and ultimate fate of FurAffinity, this current issue was still beyond what I'd imagined. I suppose I should've figured some scumbag would take advantage of the situation and cause chaos. This attack seems bizarre in ways that I don't want to publicly speculate on. There are enough rumors as it is.

Consider this an urgent reminder that FurAffinity should not be your only gallery or the only website that you use to conduct business. The site abruptly being unsafe or unavailable for an indeterminate period of time was the worst case scenario and it has happened.

@KinkyKobolds And also Twitter and Discord should not be your only avenues of communication with your users.

@faoluin
Wholeheartedly agreed, though I can understand why a free volunteer-run site wouldn't have a formal status page.

@faoluin
Also, there isn't anything on their Twitter account that discusses this incident. They haven't posted there in two weeks. It seems their Discord is the only source of information. It's inexcusable to not have a public, up to date communications channel during this kind of issue.

@KinkyKobolds that one's on twitter, it doesn't show you recent posts unless you're logged in.

Edit: It looks like there's a bunch of deleted posts.

Edit 2: FA Twitter has been compromised

@KinkyKobolds The whole thing is just weird.

Over on birdsite, the FA page on there explained what happened, and now the whole post/thread about the update is gone.

There's still the post from 17 hours ago, but not the update to that. I managed to screenshot it before it was gone, but they were blaming a service called Network S*lutions.

@Scalebutt
They have not made a post that is not a reply since they announced that Dragonair died on August 6th. Anything else they posted was a reply and therefore not visible to a logged out user.

Edit: Twitter doesn't show posts in chronological order. Therefore, they may have posted about this incident, but Twitter's algorithm doesn't think it's worth showing up top.

@KinkyKobolds That's....weird. I'm not sure why you can't see it, but there's a post at the top on their twitter that is only 18 hours old.

I'm on my computer though not a phone. Could that make a difference somehow?

@Scalebutt
Apparently you don't even get the posts in chronological order on the user page anymore. Twitter is really doing a good job of making themselves unusable.

@KinkyKobolds @Scalebutt I've heard their birdsite account has been compromised quite recently, too, hence the absence of some messages right now.

@KinkyKobolds

There are many other places to host and view furry artwork, but FA is still one of the best with the least amount of baggage clinging to it. But furries will always be targets so long as the intolerant are allowed free reign.

If I was a hosting site for anything right now, I'd be concerned about this sort of attack and begin asking my IT staff if we were vulnerable to it. I'm 99% certain that most of them are.