[2015-11-09]ProtonMail pays Bitcoin ransom to stop DDoS attack

[Sturgeon]

Distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks with extortion demands for payments in Bitcoin to stop them are becoming more and more popular in 2015, but what happens if you give in and pay the ransom?
Switzerland-based email service provider ProntonMail (Proton Technologies AG) has found out the hard way that paying the ransom doesn’t work after the company experienced the multiple DDoS attacks and paid the ransom.
The company was hit by its first DDoS attack on November 3, complete with an now usual email preceding it that warned it would happen if a payment was not made; after the first attack resulted in the website being offline for fifteen minutes,  a second attack on November 4 was described as being more sophisticated and intense.
After taking steps to mitigate the attacks with their datacenter and their upstream provider, the attack went further: “The attackers began directly attacking the infrastructure of our upstream providers and the datacenter itself,” ProntonMai

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/11/09/protonmail-pays-bitcoin-ransom-to-stop-ddos-attack-then-is-attacked-further/

[Sturgeon]

other source of this news
https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/2015/11/05/protonmail-statement-about-the-ddos-attack/

[RustyNomad]

Interesting the messages that the hackers 'posted' back via Blockchain.info

Public Note: We are not attacking ProtonMail! Our attack was small, directed at their IP only and lasted 15 minutes only!

Public Note: WE DO NOT HAVE THAT POWER! NOT EVEN CLOSE!

Public Note: We have no such power to crash data center and no reason to attack ProtonMail any more!

Public Note: Somebody with great power, who wants ProtonMail dead, jumped in after our initial attack!

Above can be viewed here https://blockchain.info/address/1FxHcZzW3z9NRSUnQ9Pcp58ddYaSuN1T2y

According to that somebody else came in after them pushing the attack to higher levels.

[indiemax]

Interesting the messages that the hackers 'posted' back via Blockchain.info

Public Note: We are not attacking ProtonMail! Our attack was small, directed at their IP only and lasted 15 minutes only!

Public Note: WE DO NOT HAVE THAT POWER! NOT EVEN CLOSE!

Public Note: We have no such power to crash data center and no reason to attack ProtonMail any more!

Public Note: Somebody with great power, who wants ProtonMail dead, jumped in after our initial attack!

Above can be viewed here https://blockchain.info/address/1FxHcZzW3z9NRSUnQ9Pcp58ddYaSuN1T2y

According to that somebody else came in after them pushing the attack to higher levels.

Sound like a CIA dirty trick to make Bitcoin look bad

[Kprawn]

The first attacker picked the lock and the second attacker broke the door. The latest articles hint at much larger countries getting in on the action to take down ProtonMail.

Whatever they do, they should not give in to ransom demands... rather take that money and invest it into anti-DDoS strategies and stronger equipment.

ProtonMail fall under Switzerland laws and the Swiss government has started to work more and more with US security agencies to "fight global terrorism"  So they not that

neutral as they used to be.   

[richardsNY]

Paying a ransom in this case is a horrible idea. If you pay them once, they will surely come back another time for more. That's why it is a much better option to invest a decent but worthy amount into DDoS protection as Kprawn also mentioned.