Den ene e-post leverandøren opplever voldsomt angrep

[G]

Er det andre i samfunnet som er like hardt angrepet som Runbox.no for øyeblikket?

 

En av e-postkontoene mine er hos runbox.no 

De har varslet myndigheter og håper å få ryddet opp i det.

[G]

 

 

For the past two days Runbox has been subject to powerful Distributed

Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, attempting to block access to Runbox

for our customers.

 

The attacks were initiated by a group that have demanded Runbox pay

them a large amount of money to prevent further attacks in the coming

days. This is a request that Runbox will not comply with.

 

On the contrary, we were able to successfully mitigate against the

effects of both incidents, despite them being in the 20-30 Gbps

bandwidth range.

 

During the initial attack the Runbox email services were inaccessible

for around 15 minutes before we could fend off the attack. Yesterday

our customers should not have noticed any effects of the attack.

 

However, we have reason to believe that the attacks might be scaled up

in the coming days.

 

Please continue reading for important information about how this may

affect you, and what Runbox is doing to prevent any further service

disruptions.

 

What is a DDoS Attack?

===============

A DDoS attack prevents users from accessing a service by using a large

number of computers to send a very large amount of requests to the

service.

 

This floods the bandwidth and resources of the system to a point where

genuine connections from users cannot get through. This makes the

service appear to be "down". 

 

These attacks can take place against web hosting services as well as

email services like Runbox.

 

Who is affected?

==========

When a DDoS attack is executed it may affect not only the target

service but the entire network it's hosted on. 

 

In this case, other email providers such as ProtonMail and VFEmail

have also been attacked by the same group, and a number of banks and

other services have been affected as well.

 

These sorts of attacks are not new on the Internet, and for those who

run Internet based services they are part of the everyday Internet

"weather". However, attacks on the scale we have seen recently can be

challenging to deal with.

 

How will this affect me?

===============

If Runbox is subject to another DDoS attack you may experience

problems connecting to Runbox' website and email services, and there

might be delays delivering incoming and outgoing email. Our web

hosting services may also be inaccessible.

 

The attacks will not affect any of the data stored on the Runbox

servers. Your email is securely stored and is safe from these types of

attacks.

 

What is Runbox doing about this?

====================

Although DDoS attacks are something all providers of Internet services

can expect to deal we should be clear that they are a criminal act,

and demanding payment to prevent them is extortion.

 

Runbox will never pay to prevent such attacks, and anyone who does pay

helps create a market for these groups.

 

We have therefore reported these incidents to The Norwegian National

Authority for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and

Environmental Crime, and are also working with our partners and the

Norwegian Computer Emergency Response Team (NorCERT) to mitigate

against further attacks.

 

What can I do?

=========

Runbox, together with our partners, will do what we can to continue

fending off the attacks. Our goal is for you to not notice any kind of

disruptions to our services.

 

We refuse to give criminals the power to decide which Internet

services we use, or how, or when -- and we ask you to stand by Runbox

and other, similar services who refuse to back down. 

 

It might become a bit bumpy, but we are confident that with help from

the authorities and our partners we will be able to defeat the

attackers.

 

If you are an email provider, or a provider of any online service,

never give in to extortion. Doing so will only strengthen and

embolden the criminals, and the next attack might be worse.