Liquid (Zol) faced a DDoS attack on email service, explains why your inbox was empty

Liquid has communicated that they were the victim of a large-scale DDoS attack on their Hosted Email Service. They found out they were under attack on Workers’ Day, around 11PM.

DDoS stands for Distributed Denial of Service.

Multiple computers are used to target a single computer or network. The goal of a DDoS attack is to make it difficult or impossible for the target to function properly. DDoS attacks can be used to disrupt online services, steal data, or extort money from victims.

The attack on Liquid’s email service led to customers having problems logging in, sending or receiving emails.

Liquid says the issue has been resolved.

Important Notice: Liquid Hostedmail dysfunction

At approximately 11 PM CAT on 1 May, the system alerted us to a large-scale DDoS attack on our Hosted Email Service.  The risks were effectively mitigated, however the unprecedented size of the attack exposed some limitations in the scalability of the authentication service. The engineering team moved quickly to identify and address the root problem.

As of the time of this update, normal service operations have been restored, all users are now able to log in without issue, and all new send requests are being processed as expected. The remaining backlog of inbound email requests may take up to 12 hours to clear.

Having addressed the root issue, we are marking this incident as closed. We sincerely apologize for the impact this service interruption has had.  

Update time: 1 AM 3/05/2023

This means any inbound email backlog should be resolved by around 1 PM today.

It’s starting to look like 2023 will be a year to forget for Liquid. It’s been a bumpy ride. They have faced too many service disruptions this year. This time around it’s because of an attack but it adds up, customers have a right to feel aggrieved. Here are just some of the problems they have had to deal with:

• Liquid was facing an internet outage earlier this morning. Why was it just slow and not completely off?
• Liquid (Zol) facing another service degradation nationwide, its slow speeds until further notice
• Liquid Home (Zol) service outage in some areas in Harare
• Liquid Home (Zol) facing system challenge, you may fail to top up or make payments

It’s only the beginning of May and yet Liquid has a year’s worth of service disruptions. They have to work on this, lest they start bleeding customers or at the very least, losing the stellar reputation they had for a while.