On Thursday, hundreds of businesses, government offices and schools in Canada, the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong received emailed bomb threats demanding payment in cryptocurrency.
No explosives were actually set off, as several investigative agencies dismissed the threats and lacking credibility.
READ MORE: Bomb threats demanding Bitcoin investigated across Canada, U.S.
However, the wave of threats caused consternation and worry and prompted massive police responses in several cities.
Here’s what we know and don’t know about the emailed bomb threats:
The threats were similar in nature
The targets of the threats all received poorly-worded letters in which they were told that bombs would be set off on their property if they didn’t make cryptocurrency payments to the tune of $20,000.
Some of the emails had the subject line “Think Twice,” and appeared to be sent from spoofed email addresses.
The sender of the emails claimed to have had someone plant a bomb in the recipient’s building, and that the only way to stop them from setting it off was by making a $20,000 Bitcoin payment.
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They were received in dozens of cities
Threats were reported in many cities across Canada, including Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg, Penticton, Vernon and Kamloops.
In the U.S., hoax threats were received in a number of cities including Washington, D.C., New York, Detroit, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Grand Rapids, Iowa and Denver.
Emailed threats were also received in several cities in Australia and New Zealand. The South China Morning Post reported that threats were also received in Hong Kong.
WATCH: Scene in Penticton from Thursday email bomb threats
No one appears to have paid the ransom
As the threats came to light, the RCMP told Canadians not to comply with them.
Although the emails warned of dire consequences if recipients didn’t make the demanded Bitcoin payment, there’s no evidence yet to suggest that anyone paid the ransom.
Who was responsible? Investigators don’t yet know
Investigators do not yet know who was responsible, two federal officials said on Friday. There is no evidence to suggest that any of the recipients made ransom payments, one of the officials noted.
Cisco Systems Inc’s Talos cyber security unit said it believes the threats came from a group of fraudsters previously responsible for sending “sextortion” emails that claim to have videos showing the recipients having sex.
In the emails, the fraudsters threaten to release compromising videos they claim to have obtained with software that recorded people through webcams on their computers.
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Some of this week’s bomb threats came from the same internet addresses used in those sextortion campaigns, Talos researcher Jaeson Schultz said in a blog post.
“The criminals conducting these extortion email attacks have demonstrated that they are willing to concoct any threat and story imaginable that they believe would fool the recipient,” the blog said.
“We expect these sorts of attacks to continue as long as there are victims who will believe these threats to be credible, and be scared enough to send money to the attackers,” it said.
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How did Canadian authorities respond?
Police departments in Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa and Winnipeg, as well as the Ontario Provincial Police and RCMP detachments in B.C. and Manitoba, investigated multiple threats that all proved groundless.
Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said Canadian police and security officials would be working with their international counterparts to probe the threats.
“The level of international collaboration here is very high — police, security, intelligence across three continents making sure that we examine an incident like this and learn every conceivable lesson from that experience, including response capacity,” Goodale said at an appearance in Toronto on Friday.
“We will go to school on all of that.”
READ MORE: Bomb threats demanding bitcoin hit Australia, New Zealand; police call it a ‘scam’
Goodale said experts in three continents have already begun analyzing Thursday’s threats for potential lessons.
While the consensus appears to be that the threats were idle attempts at extortion, they have thrown up questions on the time and resources that should be devoted to probing bomb threats.
The threats prompted everything from quiet divisional-level investigations to full-scale evacuations of public buildings and deployments of specialized explosives investigators.
Alok Mukherjee, former chair of the Toronto Police Services Board, said the issue of threat response is a sensitive one that can be difficult to navigate. Regardless of which approach a force may opt for, he said every agency grapples with the same core struggle.
“These are difficult situations requiring police agencies to assess and decide on appropriate public communication balancing the need to inform against the need to avoid causing undue alarm,” he said.
— With files from Reuters and the Canadian Press
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