Eight thoughts swatting1/23/2024 ![]() ![]() Such hallmarks are consistent in at least a half dozen states, according to an analysis by Wired magazine, which noted that multiple local police officials had reportedly traced the calls back to Africa. With the recent wave of swatting incidents targeting schools, news outlets have identified several commonalities across communities and states, including callers with thick accents, state-by-state clusters of hoax calls and similar false crime scene details, “These are smaller organizations that are trying to sell their services, not what I would call really sophisticated.” ![]() “Swatting is not something a nation state is going to get involved in,” said Turgal, now the vice president of cyber risk and strategy at Optiv Security. teens may still be pulling the strings with low-level foreign actors. While he does not necessarily believe it’s a government-sponsored attempt to sow chaos on American soil, Turgal thinks U.S. Given its size, he suspects the most recent surge at schools is likely being coordinated by a group of people including foreign actors and swat-for-hire cybercriminals who carry out hoax emergency calls for money. Turgal is a 21-year veteran of the FBI, which is actively investigating the latest swatting attacks on schools. “If they’re hitting 12 or 15 schools in a particular jurisdiction or a particular state all at once, that is absolutely a coordinated attack,” said James Turgal, a former executive assistant director for the FBI Information and Technology Branch. After all, similar swatting sprees have been coordinated in shady internet outposts for years. Now, as the police connect the dots and report commonalities, experts with years of experience chasing down swatting perpetrators believe that many - if not most - of the recent incidents targeting U.S. Weeks earlier, dozens of schools in Minnesota, Virginia and Ohio became targets. Instead, officials said the calls appeared to be part of a nationwide “swatting” hoax that’s played out at hundreds of K-12 schools in more than a dozen states since classes resumed this fall. ![]() But as South Carolina parents converged on their children’s schools and educators released students early, police statewide reached the same conclusion: This time, there was no real threat. After the police in more than a dozen South Carolina communities fielded calls last week alerting them to active school shootings, officers rushed to campuses where students and educators hid in fear for their lives.Įver since the mass school shooting in May at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school, families nationwide have been on high alert about the very real concern of such attacks decimating communities. ![]()
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