Popular password manager LastPass has revealed what it claims caused a twelve-hour outage that frustrated many users and even prompted some to consider switching providers.
Simply put, it appears that a recent update to the LastPass Chrome extension has caused a denial of service on the company servers.
“LastPass customers may be experiencing login issues and product latency due to an update to our Chrome browser extension earlier today that inadvertently caused loading issues on our backend infrastructure,” the announcement said. “The LastPass technical team is actively working to resolve these issues as quickly as possible. Customers can visit the LastPass status page for updates and details on product components experiencing login and latency issues.”
404 Not Found
As reported by BleepingComputerusers who tried to access their password vaults or log into their accounts last week were met with a “404 Not Found” message, which usually indicates that the website does not exist.
Although LastPass said services had been restored, some people were still reporting downtime: “Hasn’t worked in Chrome since the last update. I can access my vault, but can’t launch any of the sites I have in there. Clicking “Launch ” button does nothing!!,” reads a new review on the Chrome web store.
Others in the store also complained about the drop in quality after performing well for “ages.”
At the time of writing, the LastPass status page indicated that all systems were stable. The latest update was posted Friday evening and stated: “LastPass performance remains stable and fully operational. We will continue to actively monitor the service throughout the weekend before marking this incident as ‘resolved’.”
Recently, cybersecurity researchers have urged users to create strong passwords and store them in password managers. This resulted in many users not even knowing many of their passwords, simply relying on administrators for safekeeping. The LastPass outage left many people unable to log in to many of their favorite apps and services.