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ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

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171–180 of 233 posts

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes this is good advice. For some rather vivid counterexamples, read up on Genghis Khan. Computer security is of course a whole different thing.

The wrath of the Khans was amazing. Seemed like your odds of dying were pretty high either way. Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded..

And let's not forget that 1 in 200 people around the world are his direct descendants

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wrath of the Khans was amazing. Seemed like your odds of dying were pretty high either way. Give him all your stuff and starve. Or say no and get beheaded..

And let's not forget that 1 in 200 people around the world are his direct descendants

[deleted]

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are talking about India, it wasn't a "country" before the British. It was a mixture of disparate kingdoms and sultanates. Not to mention that before the British, most of India was under Muslim colonizers i.e. the Mughals. The Indians have always been a conquered people, it is only in the last 70 years that they have had freedom; you should thank the British for it.

Your comment may be factual, but you could have skipped the "you should be thankful" bit. It's quite a rude thing to say to someone you don't know.

That's not the context the OP used... It was: "you should thank", not "you should be thankful". A very subtle difference, but in this case (to you), it's the difference between offending and not.

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See also: The life of Brian, 'What have the Romans ever done for us'. As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is. That the UK gave up India is a pretty complex affair but you can bet that the 'let's fight' option was only taken off the table when someone did so…

I seriously doubt that the "let's fight" option was anywhere near the table when India gained independence. The records will all be public by now. > As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is. Examples in post Suez history include?

Gibraltar

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I seriously doubt that the "let's fight" option was anywhere near the table when India gained independence. The records will all be public by now. > As for Britain giving up its ownership: To this date formally England lays claim to a whole bunch of places that they have colonized and in some cases it has gone to war to keep that situation as it is. Examples in post Suez history include?

Gibraltar

I had no idea the UK had fought a war to stop the people of Gibraltar obtaining independence and self determination. Can you point me towards some references on the subject?

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#176
post #32

It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation To call upon a neighbour and to say: -- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away." And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld And then you'll get rid of the Dane! It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look impo…

I guess Kipling's knowledge of this had a practical basis, since he was one of the chief apologists for the systematic extortion the British Empire used to enrich itself.

Was he really? The White Man's Burden isn't that ambiguous. Not now, and not even when it was written.

It was about the Philippine-American war. 2 days after publication in America, it was read in the Senate to argue for the US to end the war.

One of his more famous stories, The Man Who Would Be King is about two white men who manage to convince an Afghani tribe they're gods. It becomes undone, when one tries to marry one of the women, she attacks him drawing blood, and the tribe's priest declares he is "Neither god nor devil but a man!" (at which point one is brutally killed, and the other manages to flee). It could almost be read as an analogy for colonialism - the white men might have had a technological edge, and used shock and awe to take over, but as the natives catch on to what's happening, the risk of backlash and revolution grows.

Kipling wasn't firmly against colonialism, but he was a savvy (sometimes cynical) realist. Most colonials were pretty cynical about it.

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#177
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poems by the man who romanticized the colonization of my grandparents' country are always cool, but the logic doesn't hold up. If you're not as well-armed as the British Empire, and you very much do not have the resources to defeat the Dane, it's nice that the end of the game is oppression and shame, but you're going to lose well before you even get to endgame.

If you are talking about India, it wasn't a "country" before the British. It was a mixture of disparate kingdoms and sultanates. Not to mention that before the British, most of India was under Muslim colonizers i.e. the Mughals. The Indians have always been a conquered people, it is only in the last 70 years that they have had freedom; you should thank the British for it.

Yes. I am thankful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jallianwala_Bagh_massacre

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#178
post #160

Does any one know the technical details of the attack? The article simply refers to it as 'highly advanced denial-of-service attacks'. From the fact that it knocked off their upstream providers also means it was probably just a simple volumetric attack like an NTP or DNS reflection attack. These are relatively easy to defend against. I work for an ISP that gets hit with 5 or 6 of these a week, but because of the miti…

They say the attack "exceeded 100Gbps" (https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/). I moved my server to OVH 6 months ago, and since then any DDoS attacks don't affect me at all. OVH say they can handle up to 480Gbps of attacks, and people are reporting that they are getting up to 90Gbps of DDoS attacks mitigated by OVH without any problem. Their DDoS protection is completely free with any of their dedicated servers.

I don't really understand the logic behind setting up with a Swiss datacenter with zero (or very little) DDoS protection. It is pretty much guaranteed that China will DDoS you if you are in any way involved in helping dissident groups.

Re: ProtonMail pays $6k ransom, gets taken out by DDoS anyway

#180
Vigilante solution: You could automatically send a ransom request any time you see a company getting DDOS'd by an attacker. If the attacker is also asking them for a ransom (so the company gets two ransoms), you ensure confusion and that the attacker doesn't get paid. Otherwise, you might get paid while the attack happens.

This way:

(1) companies that pay ransoms are AWLAYS punished and it never causes an attack to stop (2) no attacker ever gets paid a ransom

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