A large surge of hoax emails with bomb threats, unless recipients pay 20.000 dollars to Bitcoins, causes mass closure in hospitals, schools, organizations, and businesses in the US and Canada
The hoax emails started appearing yesterday, Thursday morning, and basically warn that explosives have been planted in the recipient's premises and will detonate by the end of the day unless the recipient pays $20.000 in bitcoins. By late Thursday afternoon, more than 100.000 were reported to have been received messages email. A large percentage of the emails used different email addresses, e-wallets, sender's name and the type of explosive materials. That is, someone or someones didn't just send a tsunami of identical scam emails, but changed the handwritten ones depending on the recipient.
A sample of these emails is the following:
I write you to inform you that my man has hidden the bomb (tronitrotoluene) in the building where your company is located. My mercenary built a bomb according to my instructions. It is compact and it is hidden very carefully, it is impossible to destroy the structure of the building by my bomb, but in case of its detonation there will be many wounded people.
My mercenary is controlling the situation around the building. If he sees any strange activity or cops he will blow up the device.
I can call off my mercenary if you make a transfer. You pay me 20'000 usd in Bitcoin and explosive will not detonate, but do not try to fool me -I assure you that I have to call off my recruited person only after 3 confirmations in blockchain.
These emails have caused a lot of problems and closing many buildings in the US and Canada, including:
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Municipal Railroad bus disruptions and evacuations of the Jewish Community Center and the San Francisco Fire Department.
According to ABC 7, evacuations in many hospitals and businesses in Chicago.
Base of the Tampa Bay Times Closing buildings and schools in Tampa, Florida.
https://twitter.com/0x736A/status/1073302647829082112?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1073302647829082112&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Farstechnica.com%2Finformation-technology%2F2018%2F12%2Fa-tsunami-of-emailed-bomb-hoaxes-prompts-evacuations-across-the-us-and-canada%2F
All three of the above references are a small part of what happened to both of them countries. So far, there are no reports of explosives. THE New York police report that threats are pranks.
It seems unlikely that he, or those responsible for the spate of emails, are waiting to be released money από αυτό το κόλπο. Πρώτα από όλα ο μέσος άνθρωπος θα χρειαστεί μια μέρα ή περισσότερο, μόνο και μόνο για να καταλάβει πώς να χρησιμοποιήσει το bitcoin. Και ακόμη και οι άνθρωποι που ήδη έχουν bitcoin είναι απίθανο να προβούν σε πληρωμή 20.000 δολαρίων χωρίς πρώτα να καλέσουν την αστυνομία.
Since the perpetrators have tried to change the text to thousands of emails each time depending on the recipient, the most likely motivation is to want to create disturbances to the greatest possible extent, or at least to experiment with such massive disturbances. On the other hand, a bomb threat, as ridiculous as it may seem, for the US and Canada, is always taken seriously.
