Fastmail seems to be down
 

Connection seems down. Other sites work OK.

California. Has been down here for around half hour that I know of. This is so rare, and a big deal to me given how I depend on Fastmail.

There's an issue with FM webmail: https://www.fastmailstatus.com/

I'm seeing it myself here in USA West Coast, for about an hour now. Fwiw, I use Cloudflare DNS. I'll have to try other DNSs/ISPs. Occasional emails trickle in though.


Update: I tried from my mobile (a different ISP), and can't login to webmail. Also, I tried from my desktop client (POP, not IMAP or JMAP) and the connection hangs.

Down down under also.

Looks like a Denial of Service (DOS) attack. :-(

https://twitter.com/Fastmail/status/1451374471344918533

This reminds me of the DDOS attack a few years ago which hit FastMail along with ProtonMail and a few other independent email providers. I remember FM hustled to switch over to some mitigation service and later had a wonderful blog write-up explaining what exactly went down.

FastmailStatus posted this about 15 mins ago:


We're seeing an ongoing attack against our primary network provider. We're working with them to block the attack and restore access.

Hope you don't need 2FA
 

This is my beef with two-factor authentication, you're up a creek in these situations.

It looks like they are up ... at least for now.

At time of writing, it's down here in UK for webmail, IMAP is hanging on Thunderbird.

Hey Jeff its nice to see you my friend!!

Im sorry you also had issues......

You probably mean when the 2FA code is sent by email. Yeah, sucks. But better if you use 2FA via TOTP/app, so it doesn't arrive via email or SMS/txt. But I guess not all websites/providers offer this.


If 2FA via email is critical, consider registering for another (hopefully free) email service that relays the emails to your FM account, but also stores the relayed emails, even if in the trash for a limited time. You can only bother to login to that account when you need to access 2FA emails due to FM being down.

Great to see that FM is back up in a reasonable amount of time, but it reminds me again why using one of the smaller providers as your main email service is a bit risky considering the number of outages we see. FM is obviously one of the biggest and most professional providers, and yet they can still be taken down by a DDOS attack if that is the reason. It is not hard to imagine what could happen to one of the many very small providers. Even if they ultimately survive the attack because they utilize major service providers it can be really bad to lose critical email for even a few hours.

There is no absolute prohibition on small email services having an infrastructure that includes access to specialist services that assist in mitigating DDOS attacks. Indeed, at one point when their services were based at NYI, Fastmail seems to have had this pretty well under control. Of course, you do not get additional robustness in your systems for free, and even the largest, best protected systems on the planet can theoretically suffer from DOS if the attack is big enough and well designed enough.

Sure, but how many do? And, when things go wrong the small provider may very well be asleep, traveling, or otherwise out of touch. There is a rule in flying and boating that applies here too: if something can go wrong, it will, and at the most inconvenient time possible. As a longtime boater we always joke that if the anchor drags it will happen at 2am, and we have not been disappointed!

There is, of course, a counter argument. The smaller services are not a common target for attacks. Anyone organising a massive DDOS operation is much more likely to target Google or Microsoft than a small operation. In the end, the most important factors are (i) is the organisation technically competent? (Fastmail is); and (ii) are they professional? (Fastmail is not terrible, but could be better).

FM on Twitter just now:

Still down in Aussie.
Dont they have a back up server in another country?

I'm pretty sure their main servers are handled by New York Internet from a New Jersey data center in the United States. https://fastmail.blog/company/nyi-datacentre-move/

It seems this is a new/second outage happening now, beginning about 30mins ago.

Back up in Aust

Back down again?

Down again.

it's back for me

Yep, me too.

It just went down for me. This is getting extremely annoying!

I can’t connect via the app or the web interface here in Baltimore.

Everything Down but Status
 

Pretty much everything down for me -- no Thunderbird, no web, no mobile. Status needs updating.

yep gone again for me. Timing is bad. I'm trying to prepare my Surface Pro for a trip away and I need access to my emails to install some apps.

First world problem but I'll throw something through the TV is the Red Sox lose the MLB today!!!

It's been up and down sporadically for me the past few hours. I'm at my desktop and am glad I have POP setup on my account. When I notice access is temporarily restored, I download the latest batch of emails into Thunderbird, then read at my convenience. Calendar updates locally in TB sync up to FM via CalDAV occasionally.

Both Fastmail and Runbox seem to be having issues.:(

Just came across this. Since this affects both Runbox and Fastmail, I'm posting it in both forums. Hope that's OK, just this once. :)

https://therecord.media/ddos-attacks...ail-providers/

Some people are saying it's because of this:

https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx...m&run=toolpage

Screencap, if link disappears:

https://i.postimg.cc/kg6hHT2r/truthsocial.jpg

Definitely nothing to do with an particular MX records pointing at Fastmail unless they decided to hit multiple email providers at the same time just because. The other providers are getting the hit by the same people.

Just thinking outside the box here . . .

Is it possible that the attack on Fastmail is independent of the attack on the others, could it be a coincidence and the attacker of the others is just taking the credit for the Fastmail attack?

No, I've connected directly with people at other providers and confirmed that we're being contacted from the same email addresses with identical threat text.

Thanks for that update, Bron, we do appreciate it.

#HugOps :)

Pobox seems not to be affected.

Yeah :) Pobox is on a completely separate network uplink.

This is why we can't have nice things on the internet.