GMail DOS: GMail Under Attack? (PHOTO)

GMail users are being asked to fill out a CAPTCHA when they log on to GMail. It is believed that GMail, which was down earlier today, suffered a denial of service (DOS) attack that interrupted the application.

GMail users have been receiving the notice that Google's email service is "temporarily unable to access your contacts." Sending and receiving emails has also been problematic for some users, although GMail seems to still be accessible on PDAs.

**Google has provided a workaround to access your email.**

GMail users are seeing the CAPTCHA (below) appearing when they log on and are being asked to complete it to verify that they are people, not bots, using the application.

When GMail is down, you can go to Google's App Status Dashboard to check on the status of the application. Also check here for updates on the outage.

This isn't the first time Google Mail has been experiencing problems. For additional coverage on past interruptions, see here.

See the Twitter feed below for real-time updates on the GMail disruption.

Comments

[Michael Perkins]

My gmail was hacked last night and this morning. Sending off hundreds and hundreds of spam messages to all of my contacts at midnight, 7am, and 9am before I could get to a computer and change my password. Could this have something to do with the outage? If myself and thousands of others suffered the same issue that would be a good reason for Gmail to shut down for a bunch of people.

[raechel]

Strange. I've been using gmail on & off all day, with no problems at all. And no CAPTCHA.

[Varun Srivastava]

Gmail it seems is goin under trouble! and it seems its not limited to any specific region! either they are undergoin maintenance which is highly unusual and not possible for ths long or a distributed DOS attacks bringing a string of gmail DCs down