Bengaluru : Police in Bengaluru have written to an end-to-end encrypted email provider based in Cyprus, requesting information on the IDs that were used to make “false” bomb threats to seventy schools in Bengaluru and its surrounding areas on Friday.
The probe into what the police have judged to be “hoax” threats to blow up the educational institutions will be overseen by two senior officials in the interim. 48 schools in Bengaluru city received emails claiming that “there were explosives” on their property. The 22 remaining schools are situated in an outlying area. The police claim that the text in each email was the same.
The investigation would be supervised by N Satheesh Kumar, Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime), as several incidents have been reported in the city. “The investigation into the emails in the city will be coordinated by the JCP (Crime),” Bengaluru Police Commissioner B Dayana said to DH. The technological assistance will come from the Cyber Crime Police Station. The domain service provider where the emails were registered has also received correspondence from us,” he added.
Inspector General of Police (Central Range) B R Ravikanthe Gowda informed DH that the Bengaluru Rural district’s Cyber Crime Police Station has been tasked with conducting the probe.
The inquiry will be supervised by the Rural Superintendent of Police (SP). The inquiry will receive assistance from all other police stations where cases have been filed, according to Gowda.
Among the other schools that got the threatening emails were Neev, Ebenezer International School, Delhi Public School, Vidyashilp Academy, New Cambridge School, Greenwood High, and Brooklyn National Public School.
Anti-sabotage and bomb squads were deployed as soon as the police were alerted by the schools. The investigators declared the threat a hoax toward Friday evening.
The emails were sent from khariijites@beeble.com and khharijites@beeble.com, according to the police. Police think the offenders concealed their email addresses by using encrypted Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). The two email addresses were registered with Nicosia, Cyprus-based Beeble.com, a domain provider offering end-to-end encrypted email services.
Beeble has not yet responded to the police.
The provider also did not respond to an emailed query by DH. Different email addresses registered with Beeble were also used to send bomb-threat emails to schools in Malaysia in November and in Trinidad and Tobago in May. A senior Malaysian police officer had said that “the IP address is from Finland, but this IP address can keep changing,” as reported by local media.
