Recently the newly famous ProtonMail service was under attack by DDoS attack. This attack was believed to be the hacking group Armada Collective.
ProtonMail:
The new anonymous email service many know from the known hacking serious Mr. Robot.
Well, maybe you knew or you read it somewhere that they received a blackmail email November 3rd.
Armada Collective:
They are the hacking group that was believed to have DDoS'ed ProtonMail which began Tuesday the 3rd.
They have also been responsible for recent DDoS attacks in Switzerland.
The Attack:
They sent vast amounts of packets to Protons servers which got up on 100Gbps and overloaded their system also, their ISP and other party companies were also affected.
Protons ISP data center was taken down simply by the DDoS attack which was towards Proton and not ISP yet it reached their data center & routers in Zurich, Frankfurt plus several others.
- these guys came to play clearly.
- RANSOMWARE
To top it off, they wanted $6000 from ProntonMail.
They recieved a blackmail email saying they were to give them the money, which they obviously didn't, and then we're DDoS'ed and Proton actually hands them over the $6000 in BitCoins. But they continued the attacks.
Man that' just too cruel.
Bit Coins:
If you don't know what bitcoin is, it is untraceable online currency that a lot of hackers use to do business with, especially on The Deep Web.
It is very very very hard to trace Bit Coins near impossible.
Defense Fund:
There has now been raised over $12.000 to ProtonMail with the intentions of keeping them secure in the future.
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11 Comments
Maybe I'm wrong here, but isn't the blockchain public? You can trace the address and the addresses they are sending to and even when they withdraw can't you? Maybe I'm wrong but bitcoin only seems anonymous when you are buying services with bitcoin online or when you are sending to another address...
That's right, Bitcoin is the most transparent form of currency in the world. It is only hard to trace if the hackers are already untraceable and convert the currency. If you canny attach the Bitcoin address to anyone, the actual buyers are still hidden.
Good analysis, Phoenix!
I agree with you totally. This likely an attack by a government agency. No small group could generate that much traffic.
I am also devasted. I was expecting an important mail and i cannot access! :( Now that they are raising funds for defense systems, i would like to ask about that. How can you defend from a DDoS attack like that, and what kind of counter measures do they want to install? Could anybody explain me this?
Proton is offline at this moment, sad. Why would someone try to ddos protonmail, this is ridiculous. I don't know what government is being such a dick but they aren't really achieving something here.
I, for one, doubt it is one of the other email providers.The number of users migrating to protonmail is trivial. Second, it would illegal for them to conduct this DoS attack. They wouldn't risk their profitable businesses to shutdown a competitor who isn't even on their radar.
That is very interesting, I thought the same thing when I re thought about it being another email provider doing the attacks.
Which leaves me wondering who could have, and how would someone say myself be able to figure out who is responsible for the 2nd DDoS attack.
It's likely a state sponsored spy agency such as NSA who is trying to keep people from using protonmail for privacy. The NSA, for one, cannot tolerate ANY privacy. They want to see and read everything.
so childish if you ask me for NSA to have that kind of attitude when it comes to our privacy and freedom. It was about time someone created an opponent for NSA and hopefully ProtonMail will only continue to expand and become such a big part of the hacking community and just IT area in general that NSA will have to bow because it has met its master.
Unlikely.
The NSA will not bow to someone like Protonmail. The best we can hope for is to EVADE them, not master them.
Poor prontonmail what did they ever do?
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