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.
 
Bet it's a scriptkiddy who got banned for hacking/xray

While I doubt any real bombs are going to be set off it's still terrifying and you never know if some whack job is actually going to take advantage of it. Although the real threat in the UK is still kebabs. They should focus more on kebabs than autists getting upset at other Minecraft players.
 
  • Agree
Reactions: The Demon
I can feel where the owner is coming from, if anything did happen he'd have authorities or even FBI prodding him for information, and who knows if he could be held liable for it.

On the other hand, this is a throwback to when google disclosed a 2mi diameter of IP addresses and location data to Richmond PD, and the kid could willingly hand over any IP that matches a certain location parameter that the call came from.

That's if the kid who pranked the threat didn't just use a VPN or some shit.
 
This is what they meant when they said violent video games influence our children. Next thing you know kids are gonna be chopping up pigs with wooden pickaxes.
 
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