Update
https://protonmaildotcom.wordpress.com/
ProtonMail
DDOS Update
We’re sorry that we were unable to prevent this from happening and we are determined to get everyone access to their email as soon as possible.
On Tuesday November 3, 2015 ProtonMail was taken offline by an extremely powerful DDOS attack.
For people who don’t know what a DDOS attack is, here is a metaphor that best illustrates it:
Imagine yourself as a car on the freeway. You want to access ProtonMail, so you are driving to visit our site that’s located in Switzerland. Because the internet is amazing, it takes less than a second to arrive. During a DDOS attack, millions of fake cars join you on the freeway and cause a massive traffic jam. The result is that ProtonMail is unharmed and perfectly fine, but no one can visit because of the grid-lock.
The attackers began by flooding our IP addresses. That quickly expanded to the datacenter in Switzerland where we have our servers. In the process of attacking us, several other tech companies and even some banks were knocked offline temporarily.
Despite our best efforts, we have been unable to stop the attack but we are working non-stop to get back online.
Even though access is limited, an important thing to note is that our core end-to-end encryption holds strong and is 100% untouched. All user data is fine and safe.
To solve this problem we are working with the top companies and people both onsite in our Swiss data center and from around the world. We are confident we will be back online – we just wish it was sooner rather than later.
For the latest updates, Twitter is the best place to look.
If you or someone you know has experience with mitigating enterprise level DDOS attacks, we welcome your expertise. You can contact us via the following addresses:
Andy Yen:
andy.l.yen [at] cern [dot] ch
Jason Stockman:
hello [at] jasonstockman [dot] com
.gif "IP Gear")
