CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. (WDEF) — Who called in that false shooting call one week ago Thursday that disrupted life at UTC?
Cyber security experts say it’s a cybercriminal group that has been causing problems across the globe.
According to an intelligence report from the Center of Internet Security, the cyber group “The Com”, short for “The Community”, is the primary cybercriminal group responsible for the series of at least 10 swatting calls across the country against college campuses over the past week.
In particular, a subgroup of “The Com”, dubbed “Purgatory”, specializes in swatting calls after being paid to do so.
Just last year, three members of this were indicted in a federal court in Maryland on a series of swatting calls across the country.
John Cohen, who is CIS’s executive director for countering hybrid threats, and previously was the under secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, along with a FBI bulletin, says “The Com” is a dangerous organization engaging in extortion, including of minors, the production of child sex abuse material among other cyber crimes.
Cohen said, “A criminal organization or a foreign intelligence service could actually hire these group of swatters to engage in swatting on their behalf.”
An actor from this group has claimed responsibility for the UTC and other incidents over the past week in a Wired magazine article.
Cohen says this is not unusual for these cybercrime groups to draw attention to themselves.
He said, “These cyber criminals, these hacking collectives, they want people to know what they’re doing, because a big part of their activity is to gain notoriety from themselves and cause fear and disruption amongst the intended victims.”
Cohen says that it can be difficult to locate the preparators of this crime since they mask their identities, but adds the law enforcement has increased their sophistication in tracking down these criminals.
He says that there are some ways that we can fight back against these groups.
Cohen said, “Training your call takers if you’re a law enforcement agency to ask questions if someone is making a type of call so you can process that call and determine if it is real.”
In the meantime, students hope for a resolution.
One student, Sarah Brotton, said, “It’s just crazy all of the fear that they’ve put us through on campus, and something like that would happen here at UTC.”
Another student, Kaitlyn Fisher, said, “I was pretty petrified like, “Do I continue to learn? Or am I going to lose my life today?”
The FBI continues to investigate all of these college swatting calls including the incident here in Chattanooga.
