ProtonMail deleted the accounts of "mineral", demanding to return to him 120 bitcoins from the WEX exchange

The Swiss postal service ProtonMail conducted its own investigation and removed mailboxes from which to Russiangovernment agencies received false reports of mining.

Company representatives confirmed that threats were sent through their service.

«We have received copies of the emails,sent from our systems from third party sources. All accounts involved have been identified and permanently disabled. We have stored the information we have about our subscribers and can transfer it to the Russian authorities upon official request through the Swiss police,- they said.

However, ProtonMail categorically denied the fact that they received any requests from the Russian authorities or refused to cooperate with them:

«The Russian government said that weresponded with a “categorical refusal to Roskomnadzor’s repeated requests” and that “information about the administrators of the mailboxes used to send threats was not provided.” This is categorically untrue.

We have never received any requests for helpor information on the case under consideration. In addition, the Swiss government also confirmed to us that no such request for assistance was transmitted from the Russian authorities.”

A series of false mining attacks on the territory of the Russian Federationbegan in November 2019, shortly after the publication of a BBC investigation into the possible involvement of entrepreneur Konstantin Malofeev and FSB officers in the theft of funds from users of the WEX cryptocurrency exchange (the successor to BTC-e) for a total of $450 million. Unknown «miner» demanded to pay him 120 BTC stolen from the exchange.

Various sources suggest that the "miner"there may be a real client of the site from Kiev, and even the team of Malofeev himself, who is thus trying to discredit WEX users and terminate the proceedings on the theft of funds in the legal field.

To suppress the activities of «miner» Roskomnadzor, at the request of the FSB, blocked the email services StartMail and ProtonMail, which he used in the mailing.

StartMail management, by the way, intendsappeal the lock and also announced its readiness to provide the Russian authorities with all available information about its users, if the sanction of the local court is obtained.

Note that not all letters of “mining” received from these mail services are directly related to the ransomware of bitcoins.

It is noteworthy that the last letter from the miner, dated January 31, 2020, was sent through guerrillamail.com, a service of disposable email addresses.

Photo: Joint Press Service of the courts of St. Petersburg