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Pro-Privacy Webmail ProtonMail Pays Ransom, But Hit By DDoS Attack Anyway (wordpress.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The new pro-privacy, pro-encryption webmail service ProtonMail has been under a sustained DDoS attack since November 3. They received a ransom demand a few days ago, along with a brief demonstration of how effective the DDoS attack was. They were advised to pay the ransom, and they complied. Unfortunately, the attackers launched the DDoS anyway. Here's a quote from their press release:
"Through MELANI (a division of the Swiss federal government), we exchanged information with other companies who have also been attacked and made a few discoveries. First, the attack against ProtonMail can be divided into two stages. The first stage is the volumetric attack which was targeting just our IP addresses. The second stage is the more complex attack which targeted weak points in the infrastructure of our ISPs. This second phase has not been observed in any other recent attacks on Swiss companies and was technically much more sophisticated. This means that ProtonMail is likely under attack by two separate groups, with the second attackers exhibiting capabilities more commonly possessed by state-sponsored actors. It also shows that the second attackers were not afraid of causing massive collateral damage in order to get at us."
"Through MELANI (a division of the Swiss federal government), we exchanged information with other companies who have also been attacked and made a few discoveries. First, the attack against ProtonMail can be divided into two stages. The first stage is the volumetric attack which was targeting just our IP addresses. The second stage is the more complex attack which targeted weak points in the infrastructure of our ISPs. This second phase has not been observed in any other recent attacks on Swiss companies and was technically much more sophisticated. This means that ProtonMail is likely under attack by two separate groups, with the second attackers exhibiting capabilities more commonly possessed by state-sponsored actors. It also shows that the second attackers were not afraid of causing massive collateral damage in order to get at us."
<p>As to areas which allow you to carry a gun, if someone threatens you with a knife and you have a gun, you do have the option to take it out and hope there's not an accomplice behind you, of course. Again, the average citizen is not well trained.</p>
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You've probably heard the saying "Don't take a knife to a gun fight". Well the reverse also holds true; "Don't take a gun to a knife fight."
At the ranges within which knife fights take place a gun is a liability and thinking the gun will give you leverage or protection is just wrong and will get you maimed or killed.
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.