ProtonMail Paid Hackers $6000 Ransom in Bitcoin to Stop DDoS Attacks
November 06, 2015Swati Khandelwal
The Geneva-based encrypted email service ProtonMail was forced to pay a Ransom of almost $6,000 to stop sustained Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that have knocked its service offline since Tuesday. ProtonMail – a full, end-to-end encrypted email service that launched last year – has been dealing with, what it called, the extremely powerful DDoS attack, and is still unavailable at the time of writing. ProtonMail Paid $6,000 to Stop DDoS In an official statement posted on a WordPress blog Thursday, officials of ProtonMail said the powerful DDoS attack by an unknown group of hackers forced them to pay 15 Bitcoins (about $5,850) in exchange for them halting the assault. However, even after paying the ransom amount, the crippling DDoS attacks continued to the ProtonMail service. DDoS Attack Continues Even After Paying Ransom ProtonMail officials said, "We hoped that by paying [ransom], we could spare other companies impacted by the [DDoS] attack again