Fastmail seems to be down

[fhapgood]

Connection seems down. Other sites work OK.

[Webgenie]

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.

[DumbGuy]

Originally Posted by fhapgood

Connection seems down. Other sites work OK.

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.

[JeffK]

Down down under also.

[nighthawk700]

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

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

[DumbGuy]

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.

[spamsux]

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.

[bbbc]

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

[spamsux]

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

[FredOnline]

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

[Bamb0]

Originally Posted by JeffK

Down down under also.

Hey Jeff its nice to see you my friend!!

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

[DumbGuy]

Originally Posted by bbbc

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

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.

[TenFour]

Services have been restored and we are investigating the underlying cause. No mail has been lost. Thanks for your patience.

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.

[BritTim]

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.

[TenFour]

There is no absolute prohibition on small email services having an infrastructure that includes access to specialist services that assist in mitigating DDOS attacks.

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!