A rash of bomb threats were emailed on Thursday to hundreds of businesses, public offices and schools across the United States and Canada demanding payment in cryptocurrency, but none of the threats appeared credible, law enforcement officials said.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A rash of bomb threats were emailed on Thursday to hundreds of businesses, public offices and schools across the United States and Canada demanding payment in cryptocurrency, but none of the threats appeared credible, law enforcement officials said.
One email targeting a St. Louis-area middle school was traced by local investigators to an internet protocol, or IP, address in Moscow, the sheriff’s office in Lincoln County, Missouri said.
But U. S. government sources speaking on background to Reuters said that such findings were inconclusive and that federal investigators doubted that Russians or the Russian government were involved.
The officials cautioned that such an IP address does not prove it came from Russia because the sender could have electronically laid a false trail to cover up its true origin. They suggested instead that the flurry of emails were part of a widescale digital hoax.
The security scare began shortly before 2 p.m. EST (1900 GMT) as police departments in major U.
