H fast mail today warns its users on its Blog that there is a possibility that the DDoS attack against it will continue this week.
We read from its announcement:
On Sunday 8 November 2015, around 1: 08 UTC, the FastMail was hit by a DDoS attack which resulted in some services being unavailable before the mitigation strategy was activated to block the attack. A second attack followed on Monday November 9, 2015 around 00:34 UTC. These attacks were accompanied by an extortion request that threatened further attacks this week if we did not pay the attacker 20 Bitcoin (about US$7.500).
First of all, we would like to clarify one thing. We are not responding to blackmail attempts, and we will not pay these criminals under any circumstances. We have dealt with DDoS attacks in the past, and have recently strengthened our defenses against such issues. However, there is still a chance that the attacks will cause some disruption to our users, so we are publishing this as a prenotice to get as much information as possible about what to expect.
The announcement continues with one technique analysis of what a DDoS attack is and points out that all the major email companies have been victims of extortion in recent days, including Runbox, Zoho, HushMail and Protonmail
The text makes a reference to which government departments they have addressed by asking for legal cover and protection and finally asks their clients to show patience and understanding