On December 13, 2018, thousands of businesses, individuals, schools, news agencies, and other places throughout the United States, Canada, and Australia received emailed

bomb threat A bomb threat or bomb scare is a threat, usually verbal or written, to detonate an explosive or incendiary device to cause property damage, death, injuries, and/or incite fear, whether or not such a device actually exists. History Bomb threats ...

s, warning that a "mercenary" of the sender of the email had placed a bomb in the receiver's workplace and demanding that a

ransom Ransom is the practice of holding a prisoner or item to extort money or property to secure their release, or the sum of money involved in such a practice. When ransom means "payment", the word comes via Old French ''rançon'' from Latin ''re ...

of $20,000 be sent to a

Bitcoin Bitcoin ( abbreviation: BTC; sign: ₿) is a decentralized digital currency that can be transferred on the peer-to-peer bitcoin network. Bitcoin transactions are verified by network nodes through cryptography and recorded in a public di ...

address to prevent the bomb from being detonated. Six schools in Australia's capital city Canberra were evacuated after threats. The explosive stated to be used in the bomb, along with the Bitcoin address, varied between emails. Police departments in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, an ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

, and

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, maki ...

, among other areas of the United States and Canada, stated that the threats were likely not credible and that no explosive devices had been found in any of the threatened areas. On December 14, Jaeson Schultz of

Cisco Talos Cisco Talos Intelligence Group is a cybersecurity technology and information security company based in Fulton, MD that’s a part of Cisco Systems Inc. Talos’ threat intelligence powers Cisco Secure products and services, including malware dete ...

wrote that the bitcoin addresses associated with the bomb threats received only two transactions, both of which were under $1. He also wrote that the same group was behind an earlier

sextortion Sextortion (a portmanteau of '' sex'' and ''extortion'') employs non-physical forms of coercion to extort sexual favors from the victim. Sextortion refers to the broad category of sexual exploitation in which abuse of power is the means of coercio ...

scheme which was more profitable, and that they started making new threats of throwing acid onto individual recipients. In January 2019, anti-spam researcher Ronald Guilmette found that a

GoDaddy GoDaddy Inc. is an American publicly traded Internet domain registrar and web hosting company headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and incorporated in Delaware. , GoDaddy has more than 21 million customers and over 6,600 employees worldwide. The ...

security weakness was exploited to help the spam campaign.

References

Bitcoin 2018 crimes in Canada December 2018 crimes December 2018 events in Australia December 2018 events in the United States {{crime-stub

See also

References