Runbox under DDoS Attack

[dbowdley]

We had a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack on our email services today, preventing some users from accessing our servers for a short time.

Together with our server management and hosting partners we mitigated the attack. There might be more attacks in the coming days, so please check our blog, support page or Twitter page for updates if you can’t access our email services.

[FredOnline]

Looking at EMD Favorites on Twitter today, it's showing DDoS attacks not only on Runbox, but also Proton Mail and VFEmail.

MXroute also having problems with SPAM outbreak.

Coincidence, or?

[music4praise]

This is an interesting read.

http://havokmon.blogspot.com/2015/11...es-armada.html

[jeffpan]

My biz service meets DDOS attack almost every day.

[David]

As a customer of many different email services (over the years) I expect the company I am using to just deal with these. DDOS attacks are not anything that is new.... Because of that (oft-times) I usually prefer to just pick up the phone. It is truly sad that after (approx) twenty five years, email is still in the same abysmal state as it was when it was first invented.

[janusz]

Originally Posted by David

It is truly sad that after (aprox) twenty five years, email is still in the same abysmal state as it was when it was first invented.

No, the state now is worse... When email was invented spam was nonexistent, malicious attachments were unknown (mainly because there were no attachments).
That's enough nostalgia, time to update my antivirus software :-)

[Berenburger]

What's going on? Runbox, VFEmail, Protonmail! Who's next?

[dbowdley]

We have now published a further update on the situation with Runbox.

https://blog.runbox.com/2015/11/ddos-attacks-on-runbox/

[jl66]

Incredible if this is true, bad move:

http://thehackernews.com/2015/11/enc...rotonmail.html

[William9]

Runbox: continue to do your best to mitigate the attacks, technically -- and without coins or $.

[Berenburger]

Runbox was under a new DDoS attack on Friday.

[Geir]

Thanks for the support!

We continue to post updates here:

https://blog.runbox.com/2015/11/ddos-attacks-on-runbox/

- Geir

[DigitalOrchard]

My most important email accounts have secondary MX records pointing to Google Apps (my former email provider), so when my emails are blocked at Runbox by DDoS attacks, at least I can get the incoming messages over at my Gmail accounts.

This makes me wonder... could Runbox get creative and have their own secondary MX routes that are not as obvious to direct attack? Or so many paths that it's unrealistic for hackers to try and take down them all? If anything, it would spread the attack thinner, possibly allowing some systems to continue responding.

Google has many MX records, and in the 8 years that I used them, I never had any problems. Runbox has one MX record, and 5 months into using them, my email (and my productivity) is already affected.

I know it's not just about MX records, that was just one example of a difference between two providers that I've used. In my own small (very small, less than a dozen paying clients) business, I take no chances. All websites that I build incorporate 6 redundant asset servers set up at 5 different providers, one of which is Amazon CloudFront. Even if one of these asset servers became unresponsive, it would have very little affect on my clients' websites. This is a very cheap and easy-to-maintain way of ensuring my services remain online. I do this "just in case". I hope that Runbox can setup their own systems with similar non-connected redundancy.

I eagerly await details on how they are mitigating these attacks.

[Geir]

Thanks for the suggestion.

Any MX record would have to be public and could therefore be attacked. But you can bet that we are evaluating the past few days' events and looking at how we can mitigate any future attacks even better.

- Geir

[tomhab]

All over then? Wasn't so bad - I barely noticed a thing