They were hit by a DDoS that was so big it's suspected to be a nation state. Under those circumstances, their ISP and hosting provider didn't really give then a choice and basically forced them to pay the ransom, which you can read about here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2015/11/05/proto...
The magnitude of the attack would have killed most services, but ProtonMail managed to mitigate the attack and went as far as becoming their own ISP to prevent getting in this situation in the future.
My two cents on this making them a pretty rare company.
The magnitude of the attack would have killed most services, but ProtonMail managed to mitigate the attack and went as far as becoming their own ISP to prevent getting in this situation in the future.
My two cents on this making them a pretty rare company.