Encrypted Mail Service ProtonMail Extorted Via DDoS Attack

The free encrypted email service ProtonMail has been the victim of extortion, with the extortionists perform for several days of heavy DDoS attacks against the company's website. That's what the email service via a blog posting disclosed.

Because of the attack, users can not get to their e-mail, although the service yesterday as online was. On November 3 ProtonMail received an email from a group of criminals who had previously companies through DDoS attacks have extorted. The group now focuses on Swiss hosting providers. The threat was followed by a DDoS attack that the service went offline for about fifteen minutes. Approximately 11 hours later, a new DDoS attack. Initially which only focused on ProtonMail, but spread to the Swiss data center where the servers are.

This also went to the websites of different tech companies and banks offline. The attack eventually went over 100Gbps over.It did not just attacked more the data center from the Internet ProtonMail, but also routers in Zurich, Frankfurt and other locations where the ISP nodes has listed. Then the email service decided to pay the extortionists, but despite the transfer of 15 bitcoin (5100 euros), the attacks continued. According to ProtonMail is now working with several providers to repel the attack, but were unprecedented in both size and scope.

This morning ISP was attacked so that the e-mail service offline went. "Finding a working solution is therefore not simply" know ProtonMail so late. Due to the nature of the attack should be fairly pricey solutions are enabled which are a burden on the finances of the company. Therefore it was decided a donation campaign to start. A total of 326 people so far donated approximately $ 11,000.