A widely followed online hub of furries community called Fur Affinity disappeared from the web. Hackers deleted everything on their website which contains content including art submissions and user profiles from Fur Affinity website, which actually is an online gallery that allows users to upload music, art, and written content. The furries community is a group of people having a keen interest in anthropomorphic animal characters like foxes and wolves.
The hackers have also gained access to personal user data, such as encrypted passwords and email addresses which made a easy job to access accounts of several users. A user having the profile name Fender clarified that the passwords have already been reset. Fender also revealed that the site has been facing issues since early on in May.
If you changed your password since the site went live on the 18th that information is safe.
— Fur Affinity (@furaffinity) May 21, 2016
Users at an anonymous convention were selling the site’s source code on USB sticks and the same day their site was hacked again. Then in the next attack the site’s content was deleted by the attackers. However, the site’s security team prevented key data like notes and journals from being deleted, according to Dragoneer the site’s admin.
We have received thousands of emails requesting help with accounts and staff are actively responding. We will assist you as soon as we can.
— Fur Affinity (@furaffinity) May 23, 2016
As they were having a backup of all the data deleted by the hackeers the team was able to restore Fur Affinity on 11th may, hence the damage is less.