[Resolved] Email services down because of DDoS

Our email services are inaccessible and we’re working to find out where the problem is.

We’ll keep you posted and apologize for the service interruption.

UPDATE 00:45 CET: We seem to be under a DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, flooding our servers with requests and preventing legitimate logins to our services. We’re working to block the attackers now, so stay tuned.

UPDATE 01:45 CET: We’re still working to block the attackers on several levels of our network and we expect to be back up soon.

UPDATE 03:45 CET: The attackers changed tactics but we’re regaining control over our network now, and our services should be accessible again.

10 thoughts on “[Resolved] Email services down because of DDoS”

  1. Take ‘ownership’! – You have a VERY poor track record of providing consistent service – See Facebook. If it is not somebody’s server issues, then it is an attack from Egypt.

  2. Andrew MacLeod: We have an average uptime of much more than 99.9%, and every major service experiences distributed attacks now and then. We had 7-8 people working for 4 hours to regain control over our network, so we did as much as anyone could do to get our services online again.

    Have a look here for more information on what a DDoS attack is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denial-of-service_attack

  3. You guys have have had excellent uptime for a small- to medium-size provider. Keep up the good work. We fought DDOS attacks against a customer website last year. It takes a massive amount of skilled tech time to defend against these.

  4. It looks like your service already back on track. 🙂
    I have difficulty accessing my email hours ago, but now everything seem in perfect condition.
    Keep up the good work!

  5. Yes, we still had some blocks active at that time, but the last blocks were lifted 3 hours ago.

  6. @ Geir – There have been a high number of times when SAFARI for example cannot locate the RUNBOX servers – The same for other web browsers, even though all other web functionality is normal. Please refer to FACEBOOK and the communications between us.

  7. Andrew,

    That’s odd since we have had any service disruptions since the February 6 upgrade.

    Next time it happens, could you try entering our main IP address http://91.220.196.211 into your browser address bar and see if you can reach us that way? If so, the problem is most likely related to DNS, i.e. your ISP’s domain name resolver is having trouble resolving runbox.com to our IP address.

    To see if Runbox is actually unresponsive from a number of locations around the world you can enter http://runbox.com into this service: http://host-tracker.com/

    Thank you.

  8. MacLeod… please stop blaming RunBox for this damnable attack on their systems.
    I have used RunBox for many years and have rarely had access problems.
    I live right down the street from Microsoft and talk to their techs on a daily basis. They have had huge amounts of downtime from attacks on THEIR Hotmail accounts over the years.
    The team at RunBox is the best; they handle my problems immediately when I ask for help.

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