Important: Possible disturbances due to DDoS
Created at 18.May 2022, 12:00 | Category: Info
Update: Currently (19 May) we are not experiencing any further attacks.
Dear Posteo customers,
We would like to inform you that yesterday, and today, we had to fend off DDoS attacks on a larger scale.
Yesterday evening we experienced network disruptions, delays and limited accessibility for a few minutes.
This morning, the attacks continued. Even though they are currently being warded off effectively, we would like to inform you, purely as a precaution, that restrictions could possibly arise again. We have already strengthened our existing safeguards.
During DDoS attacks, Internet services are overloaded with connection requests by criminals. Customers are then temporarily unable to access the service in question – or only to a very limited extent. Data is not attacked during DDoS attacks. With the help of technical measures, the attacks can be contained and fended off. However, how quickly this can be achieved depends on the size and type of the respective attack and also on the defensive measures taken in each case.
Unlike previous attacks, this time we did not receive a threatening letter or a demand for money.
According to our security guidelines we have also informed the German Federal Office for Information Security (Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik).
We take our responsibility as an email provider towards you very seriously. We would therefore like to give you a few more tips.
In case Posteo suddenly slows down or becomes unavailable for a short period of time in the coming days, please proceed as follows:
- Do not be concerned. There are no technical disturbances on our side.
- There may be short-term connection disruptions from certain networks and also for parts of Posteo (Website/IMAP):
- If you cannot access our website, in the meantime it may help if you connect to the Internet via another network (e.g. mobile). If using a smartphone, it may also help to temporarily disable the WiFi.
- Alternatively, you can try setting up Posteo in an email client like Thunderbird or Outlook on your Windows PC, Apple Mail on a Mac, or the system email apps on your device. Most clients will find the settings for automatically; we also provide guides in our help section: https://posteo.de/en/help/categories/email-clients
- In case of accessibility problems, please wait and then try to access our site or check your emails again. You will soon be able to log back into your Posteo account as usual.
- Visit our Twitter profile @Posteo_en or our status page https://posteo-status.de to stay up to date. Should it indeed happen that our services are unavailable, we will inform about the situation there.
- Please do not send any emails to our customer support in case of short-term inaccessibility. It is an aim of the attackers to also push the blackmailed companies to their capacity limits by mass requests from their customers.
- Emails sent to you will not be lost. In the event of disturbances, emails will be delivered as soon as our email servers are available again.
Best regards
Your Posteo team