Barrage of DDoS Attacks Bring Down ProtonMail: $6000 in Bitcoin Ransom Paid
Secure mail service provider ProtonMail has again come under renewed DDoS attack and the email service has gone offline inconveniencing its users. This is yet another high-profile case involving Bitcoin ransom which has come to light! The mail service was created to ensure the safety and privacy of the users but in a rather unusual event it is now facing an unprecedented challenge as it came under sustained and aggressive DDoS attacks which began on November 3rd, 2015. In a statement titled DDoS Update it even requested experts to help in the following words: "If you or someone you know....
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Encrypted email service provider ProtonMail recently and grudgingly gave in to a ransom demand of 15 bitcoin (approx $6000) to attackers who targeted the service with destructive Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. ProtonMail, an encrypted email service set up by CERN scientists in Geneva and researchers at MIT, has revealed crippling DDoS attacks to be the cause of a recent outage suffered by the crypto e-mail service provider. Two groups are believed to be behind the attacks, one of which began the cyber-strikes and put forth the ransom demand. The website remains down at the....
A number of privacy-oriented email service providers have been targeted by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) extortionists demanding payment in bitcoin. Hushmail, ProtonMail and Runbox, among other services, were targeted by an entity calling itself the Armada Collective. The group was the subject of a warning from earlier this fall by the Swiss Governmental Computer Emergency Response Team, a national agency dedicated to cybersecurity issues. Blog posts from the email providers indicate that the attacks took place between 3rd and 6th November. In the case of ProtonMail, the service....
ProtonMail, an open-sourced encrypted mail service founded by MIT and Stanford engineers at the CERN research facility, has suffered from a series of extremely powerful DDoS attack from unknown hackers, which took ProtonMail offline for almost 24 hours. Over the past three days, the ProtonMail team has been working with the Swiss Governmental Computer Emergency Response Team (GovCERT) and the Cybercrime Coordination Unit Switzerland (CYCO) in a criminal investigation to analyze the cyberattack and the blackmails sent after the first DDoS attack on November 3. “Slightly before midnight on....
Since the beginning of 2015, an increasing number of technology firms and bitcoin startups have been targeted by anonymous hackers demanding bitcoin ransoms. Encrypted email service provider Protonmail is one of many victims suffering from extremely powerful Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks that have effectively shut down some of their servers and databases for weeks. According to Protonmail, the hackers begun to target its datacenter that is shared with other Swiss technology firms in Geneva, leaving no choice for the team to pay over US$6,000 in bitcoin ransom to the hackers,....
As if we did not have enough Bitcoin associated-DDoS attacks in 2015, the coming year may see the number turn three-fold as automation of such attacks increases. The startling prediction has been made by a Hudson-based DDoS protection solutions provider Corero Network Security (LSE: CNS). The media release states that the volume of DDoS attacks grew by 32% per quarter, and may result in a 30% jump in Bitcoin ransom demands if the trend is allowed to continue. Dave Larson, COO at Corero Network Security said: "Just one highly publicized participant will further fuel the epidemic by causing....