In a statement announced Tuesday, the Kolkata Police said that more than 20 schools across the city have been threatened with bombs, which have been later revealed as hoaxes.
According to the sender, bombs had been placed in numerous classrooms across a variety of schools in the city, and the bombs would explode in the morning hours following the placement.
After receiving a hoax bomb threat mail on Monday, Kolkata Police took the initiative to spread an online message on Tuesday to reassure all parents that they would be there to ensure their children's safety and security, clarifying that it was a hoax mail and that they would be on hand to help.
It has been revealed that police have traced the IP address to the Netherlands where the threat mail which was sent to 200-odd schools in the city, suburbs, and Siliguri, was sent from.
An email screenshot has been shared by over 90 schools and the screenshots have been shared on more than a dozen websites.
The sender, it is thought, had threatened the students that bombs would be detonated when they arrived at school that morning and that this was the reason for the mail.
There had been no official announcement regarding this case from either the Calcutta Police or the West Bengal Police until late that evening.
There is also the possibility that none of the schools in either of the cities will publicize the threat.
Initially, Bengaluru police speculated that the email was coming from either the Czech Republic or Slovakia, but they have since removed that suspicion.
In the course of the investigation, it was found that the encryption service provider in question was the same as the one used in the Calcutta school case, though the location was in Cyprus instead of India.
It was reported that the email sender said that he used a Switzerland-based Virtual Private Network, which is also well-known for the security and privacy of end-to-end encryption and focus on privacy, to send the email according to reports from the Bengaluru Police.
There is an announcement that, in June 2022, the Narendra Modi government will ask all VPN operators to store for five years data related to its subscribers, such as names, email addresses, contact numbers, and IP addresses to tighten cybersecurity rules.
The Calcutta Police and the Bengal Police are yet to discover whether the email service provider has been contacted by either the Calcutta Police or the Bengal Police to review Monday's threat emails as yet.
Amidst a flurry of concerning emails inundating over 90 schools across Bengal, authorities promptly alerted law enforcement, triggering a swift response from the cyber crime cell.
Their immediate objective: pinpoint the sender's identity through meticulous analysis of the email's IP address.
Offering insights into the unfolding situation, a senior police official asserted that the dissemination of such emails was a deliberate ploy aimed at stoking tensions in the lead-up to the elections, underscoring the malicious intent behind the communication.
In a bid to assuage public concerns, the city police took to social media to affirm that the purported threats were indeed unfounded, branding them as mere 'hoaxes' intended to sow panic and unrest.
Further action was swiftly undertaken by authorities, with the registration of a formal case against the individual responsible for the email transmission, signalling the commencement of a thorough investigation into the matter.
This incident is but the latest in a string of similar occurrences, with the Delhi Police, just last March, apprehending a 29-year-old Bangladeshi national residing in Kolkata for orchestrating a hoax bomb threat targeting a SpiceJet flight en route from Delhi to Kolkata.
This calculated manoeuvre, as elucidated by police officials, stemmed from the individual's desire to conceal a web of deceit, as he had falsely claimed to be pursuing a PhD in the United States-a fabrication that facilitated his marriage to his spouse.
This Cyber News was published on www.cysecurity.news. Publication date: Thu, 11 Apr 2024 18:43:10 +0000