#this is as close to MLA format as I will get on tunglr

[wandering-wolf23]

Given the state of LGBT rights in Russia, I can actually see state sponsored trolls/hackers doing this. It’s not because they hate fanfic or Ao3, it’s probably because they wanted money or because they wanted to cause LGBT people a little heartburn. Anonymous Sudan isn’t Sudanese, either. They are Russian and they have ties to a Russian hacker group called Killmilk/Killnet.

I’ve heard some folks say that “milk” can be used as a slur towards Ukrainians, but I can’t confirm that and I honestly don’t feel like digging around for information on Russian slurs.

Anonymous Sudan likes attacking Western websites. This isn’t their first rodeo, either. As CyberCX puts it (and they are reputable, as far as I understand), “Anonymous Sudan is publicly aligned with other pro-Russia threat actors that are likely affiliated with the Russian state” and “ On 25 and 31 March 2023, CyberCX observed high-traffic Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against Australian organisations”. It fits their MO: attack something with a “soft” underbelly (like an organization that owns their own servers) and post a demand for an absurd ransom. In this case, 30,000 Bitcoin.

Telegram is also known to be affiliated with the Kremlin (IE: Russian powers that be). The text itself reads like it was written in Russian, then fed into Google translate for Arabic, then fed into English. This actually makes sense, because Anonymous Sudan posted in Russian first, only later changing to Arabic to add extra fuel to the troll fire. Not every language translates cleanly into another, especially languages where there are only a few loan words/base words. EX: I’ve had Google Translate turn “cleanly” into “scrubbing” because the service is guessing at the meaning of the word used. This also happens a bit more often if the words needed in Language Number 2 are a bit closer than what you realize. Google translate doesn’t always give you a 1:1 translation, but it’s super easy to use.

It’s not xenophobia to draw conclusions based on known entities. Russian trolls are a known factor. Telegram is known to be a Russian troll hot spot. Anonymous Sudan is known to be a Russian entity (seriously, read the links). They’ve done this before. Hell, they even hacked Microsoft.

TL;DR: Anonymous Sudan is known to be Russian, LGBT+ rights in Russia suck, and they probably did this to get $$$ and give people heartburn. In other words, typical trolls.

I've heard that the supposed ao3 hacking group is actually Russian in origin. It fits their MO - Russia is *wildly* anti-LGBTQ. I've heard from Russian folks that ao3 is banned there because of "moral degeneracy". Aka putin doesn't like it

youve just got the dictionary definition of this going on