My first question was: "Why on earth would anyone target Fastmail?" And to answer my own question, it seems a lot of email providers are in the firing line at the moment - <a href="https://therecord.media/ddos-attacks-hit-multiple-email-providers/" rel="nofollow">https://therecord.media/ddos-attacks-hit-multiple-email-prov...</a>
"We are seeing continued DDoS attacks against our infrastructure and are working with our network provider on mitigation strategies. Our team are working hard to provide stability."<p><a href="https://www.fastmailstatus.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.fastmailstatus.com</a>
Recent and related:<p><i>Fastmail, Runbox, and Posteo under DDoS extortion attack</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28968046" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28968046</a> - Oct 2021 (123 comments)<p><i>Fastmail is having problems again</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28963609" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28963609</a> - Oct 2021 (132 comments)<p><i>We're seeing an ongoing attack against our primary network provider</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952954" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952954</a> - Oct 2021 (87 comments)
Their response from a few days ago, including mentions of similar services affected, e.g. Mailbox.org and Posteo: <a href="https://fastmail.blog/company/fastmail-fights-off-ransom-cyberattack/" rel="nofollow">https://fastmail.blog/company/fastmail-fights-off-ransom-cyb...</a>
Can't access my website hosted there, and my notes synced using webdav pointed to files there also seem to be unavailable. Bummer.<p>Can't really blame them, though, not much you can do with cannons pointed at you. I'm sure they'll be back up soon.
I'm actually seeing the service coming back online for me now. Not ideal because I am actually doing some fairly urgent stuff over email this afternoon, but I am satisfied with the response from Fastmail. They acknowledge the issue quickly, and provided some specifics shortly after that. The total amount of time the service was unavailable for me was under 2 hours.
DDoS attacks are oftentimes a cover for other cyberattacks. While IT teams are dealing with the DDoS attack, the main hack is going on silently in the background hidden by the "noise".
Fastmail is great at reacting and transparently informing users. This is something I'd love to see "normalized" so users could efficiently assess service providers reliability.
Related discussion from 9 days ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952954" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28952954</a>
WFM, at least right now. Sending an email from gmail to fastmail took a bit longer (~25 seconds) than usual, but it got there. The web interface is fast.
By the way, is the “yet” what is regarded as “editorialized”? There’s hardly any “original title”, apart from frequently changing status updates in the body.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29058685" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29058685</a>