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

arstechnica.com

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

#181

Post by vinceguidry »

pjc50 wrote: post #165
SeanDav wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Note - I am from one of the countries invaded and occupied by Britain) I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing. By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastruct…

Indeed, it could have been worse, such as being colonised by the Belgians, who were (by some estimates) more genocidal than the Nazis.

The French were pretty awful too. To this day they're dealing with the consequences of bad decisions made a century ago.

http://www.amazon.com/French-Intifada-Between-France-Arabs/d...

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

#182

Post by vinceguidry »

jacquesm wrote: post #100
SHIT_TALKER wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are weak, you take what you can get. It was much better to have been colonized by the British, who actually had an interest in nation-building and respect for law and human rights (to the extent they deemed their subjects capable of handling them), than, say, to have become the personal fiefdom of Leopold II of Belgium.

That's a false dichotomy if there ever was one. The alternative to being colonized by the British was not to be colonized by Belgium but not to be colonized at all.

If it were my country, I'd have picked British rule over self-rule. A robust system of laws is nothing to sneeze at.

Look all over the former British Empire, and you'll see robust, healthy democracies peacefully trading with their former rulers. Countries that were never colonized got left out of the huge technological race that modernized the rest of the world after WW2.

The Anglosphere nations are among the most powerful on Earth.

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

#183

Post by walshemj »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #167
SeanDav wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Note - I am from one of the countries invaded and occupied by Britain) I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times but it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars. That was pretty amazing. By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable, but a lot of the invaded countries got enormous benefits - rule of law, economic infrastruct…

> I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times Yes, all of Europe was engaging in the monster known as colonialism. That doesn't make it any less morally repugnant. > it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars It gave up its ownership only after being devastated by two World Wars. > By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable…

would you rather had the British empire or the Belgium or Germans as your colonial masters?

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

#184

Post by walshemj »

bprieto wrote: post #174
JupiterMoon wrote: post #152

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

Who overwhelmingly don't want to become Spanish.

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

#185

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

walshemj wrote: post #183
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times Yes, all of Europe was engaging in the monster known as colonialism. That doesn't make it any less morally repugnant. > it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars It gave up its ownership only after being devastated by two World Wars. > By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable…

would you rather had the British empire or the Belgium or Germans as your colonial masters?

Nobody should be anyone's colonial master, and other empires being 'worse' doesn't make colonialism better.

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

#186

Post by mwcampbell »

jacquesm wrote: post #71
cm2187 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a working backup you are not really held hostage in the first place. But many people backup to an external drive or a NAS, which unless they happened to be offline at the time of the attack would also be compromised.

A backup is a copy of your files on another medium physically disjoint in space and not connected to the original in any way that you verify is correct after having written a copy. Anything less than that is not a backup but a mirror and mirrors while useful are not at the same level of security that a backup is. Some copies are backups, but not all of them and most copies on spinning or re-writeable media especially…

So to make true backups, is one limited in practice to tapes and DVDs?

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

#187

Post by keithpeter »

jacquesm wrote: post #97
paxtonab wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This was a collective decision taken by all impacted companies" I think they were put under pressure by other companies using the same IPS, not their customers.

That's even weirder. They have obligations to their customers not to their neighbors in the same DC, that's the territory of whoever handles their hosting.

Would those obligations be spelled out in the contract for data centre services?

I'm interested in whether the ISPs have any form of protection against the disruption caused by a customer of a shared service coming under a criminal attack of this kind.

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

#189

Post by Drdrdrq »

jexe wrote: post #188

this article is great, in a way. People pay ransoms with extreme agony, but because they are supposed to be effective. If they don't work, there goes the only reason to pay. this is exactly the article the DDoSers don't ever want to see written about them.

I wonder if the second attack was trying to punish them for paying, and a warning to others?

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

#190

Post by pm90 »

walshemj wrote: post #183
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I must come to Britain's defence here - it's behaviour was normal in those times Yes, all of Europe was engaging in the monster known as colonialism. That doesn't make it any less morally repugnant. > it did eventually give up most of its "ownership" without actually being defeated in wars It gave up its ownership only after being devastated by two World Wars. > By modern standards, British behaviour was despicable…

would you rather had the British empire or the Belgium or Germans as your colonial masters?

If you're genuinely interested in an answer, then like a sibling said, its "neither". Colonialism wasn't as inevitable as its made out to be, and the countries that were colonized weren't "uncivilized" or "barbaric": things that world history (amazingly) continues to propagate.

e.g. Colonialism in India was an incredible amount of good luck and some wily statesmanship, and not due to lack of technological progress. Once the country was colonized, the British had an ulterior interest in preventing industrial development and the concomitant economic progress.

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