Culture Bomb threats sent to schools by 'Minecraft player' - Does Vordymort play Minecraft?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43457548

More than 400 schools in England have received a hoax email threatening to detonate a bomb on school grounds if money is not handed over, police said.

A number of schools were evacuated, but police said there was no evidence the threats were terror-related.

Schools in London, Manchester and North Yorkshire were among those affected.

The email appeared to come from gaming server VeltPvP, but the company said the account had been "spoofed" and the message had not come from them.

The US firm's 17-year-old CEO told the BBC he suspected the hoax emails had been sent by a disgruntled Minecraft player in a bid to damage VeltPvP's reputation.

The email address requested payment to an email address that used the domain veltpvp.com but the website posted messages on Twitter denying any involvement.

It said: "We have nothing to do with the bomb threats that were sent out to the 400+ UK schools.

"We're extremely sorry for anyone who had to deal with this, but just know it's fake."

_100486726_veltpvp.png
Image copyrightVELTPVP
Image captionVeltPvP is mainly used by gamers aged eight to 18
'Kids' playing Minecraft
VeltPvP.com is a US-based online "player-versus-player" server that allows gamers to compete against other users in the world-building game Minecraft.

Carson Kallen, the 17-year-old CEO of the firm, told the BBC he had a team of 50 people managing 100,000 users a day.

He says: "Everyone who plays it is between the ages of eight and 18 years old - it's all kids playing."

Mr Kallen told the BBC: "Every now and then we have a little rebel who will try to do something bad like this. We've had stuff like this happen before but nothing this extreme."

He said it was likely that a disgruntled user orchestrated the attack: "He was probably a player who got banned from our server and got mad. This is his way of trying to make us look bad."

Schools evacuated
Sarah Stephenson was at her son's school, Oathall Community College in West Sussex, waiting for a meeting when it was evacuated.

"I noticed a little bit of activity going on. I went through to student support and all of a sudden a notification went out that the school was being evacuated.

"My son George was in class at the time. The students were evacuated out of the school building and told to ring their parents. An email was sent out to all the parents."

Another affected school, Dowdales secondary in Cumbria, tweeted: "As you may know the school office received a threatening email this morning.

"The decision was taken to evacuate the school as a precaution. Students and staff are safe and have returned to normal lessons."

Schools and colleges in Cumbria, Cambridgeshire, East Yorkshire, Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, West Midlands, Derbyshire, Avon and Somerset and Northumbria were also targeted.

Kantor King Solomon@kingsolomonhigh

There was a national threat made to lots of schools this morning and KKS went into invacutation to ensure the safety of our site.This was in conjunction with CST and the Metropolitan Police. We have established that there is no further threat and School is now running as normal.

10:27 AM - Mar 19, 2018

Both the Home Office and the Department for Education advised any school that received the email to contact their local police force - even though a version of the email that has been posted on Twitter warns the schools not to.

Humberside Police said 19 schools in its area received the threat. Det Supt Tony Cockerill, from the force, said: "We have spoken to all schools who have contacted us, reassured them that there is no need to evacuate and offered them security advice."

Greater Manchester Police's Assistant Chief Constable Vanessa Jardine said she understood parents and the general public would be very concerned, adding: "I want to assure you that we are working closely with all of the schools to ensure the safety of pupils and staff.

"We are carrying out extensive enquiries to understand the full circumstances and although there is not currently believed to be any direct threat, as with any report of this nature, they are all being thoroughly investigated."

A North Yorkshire Police statement described the threat as a "hoax", adding: "Our cybercrime unit detectives, supported by local officers, have looked at these incidents and it is not believed there is any genuine threat."

Seems the threats were sent through a Minecraft server and the 17 year old owner of the server firm is freaking out about it.
 
it's okay, he doesn't have a flint&tinder so he can't light the tnt

My preferred weapon is buckets of lava.

edit:

He says: "Everyone who plays it is between the ages of eight and 18 years old - it's all kids playing."

I mean, nobody ever goes onto the internet and lies about their age, right?
 
it's okay, he doesn't have a flint&tinder so he can't light the tnt


My preferred weapon is buckets of lava.

edit:



I mean, nobody ever goes onto the internet and lies about their age, right?

No love for elaborate redstone traps that shunt a player about while music boxes play You Just Haven't Earned It Yet, Baby before they're dropped into a pit of lava?
 
Sam Hyde, at it again.
FYFY

I like to joke about just rounding autists up and beating them till they die or are cured. Stuff like this makes me think, maybe we need to stop joking.

What's also scary about this we live in an era where a pimple faced kid can shut down a pile of government buildings with just a few key strokes due to fear and 0 risk tolerance (in ways rightfully so).
 
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https://www.pcgamer.com/minecraft-server-drama-leads-to-a-wave-of-bomb-threats-at-uk-schools/

A wave of 24,000 emails threatening bomb attacks against more than 400 schools in the UK led to evacuations but were not found to constitute a "viable threat," according to police investigating the matter. In fact, this Sky Newsreport says they were the result of a beef between Minecraft players, and were sent in an effort to bring down the VeltPvP gaming network.

The threat, posted to Twitter, claimed that the bombs were set to detonate three hours after the warning was received unless a $5000 ransom was paid. Some schools were evacuated as a result, according to a separate Express report, which also said that the threatening emails appeared to originate from the US.

"If you do not send the money! We will blow up the device. Our site has all the information needed (veltpvp.com)," it said. "If you try to call the cops we WILL blowup the device on the SPOT! ANY attempt at defusing it your self will cause it to explode."

The emails containing the threat were also apparently spoofed to appear as if they were coming from VeltPvP. But the site, which operates Minecraft PvP servers and sells in-game items to players (and is presumably not stupid enough to send bomb threats from its own domain), told Sky that it had nothing to do with any of it, and that the threats were actually part of an ongoing campaign against it that has also included multiple swattings.

"We've been being harassed by a group of cybercriminals that are trying to harass us in any way possible," it said in a statement. "We're extremely sorry for anyone who had to deal with this, but just know it's fake."

Northumbria Police confirmed that the threat was a hoax in a statement of its own.

One of the alleged perpetrators of the hoax acknowledged that terrorizing thousands of children by threatening to blow them up "is horrible, it's not the nicest thing," but also attempted to justify the action by accusing VeltPvP of taking part in DDoS attacks against other Minecraft servers. "What that network has done is horrible," said the person who felt that threatening to mass-murder schoolchildren was a fair and proportionate response to being mad about a videogame.

One attacker—it's not clear whether it's the same as the one above—expressed regret, "kind of," for the threats, but added, "within the community, you have to become very thick skinned or you'll get exploited ... I'm not going to lose sleep over it."

Police did not say specifically that they were pursuing the hoaxers but it's reasonable to assume that they are, and that if Sky News could find them, so can the cops—perhaps something for people to think about while they're trying to sleep.
 
Not sure if they were absolutely fucking retarded, or really fucking young with no thought of consequence.

Pretty funny though.
 
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I’m not sure if I should be pissing myself laughing or cringing. But this is amazing.
 
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