At 9:18 p.m. on Aug. 3, the San Francisco Police Department received a call from a man reporting that his brother was being held hostage in his own home. After three hours of trying to reach the victims, SWAT teams burst into the house.
Once inside, they found a husband and wife in their mid-thirties with their two small children, spending a quiet evening at home.
"There was no merit to any kidnapping or actual hostage situation," said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a public information officer for the San Francisco Police.
The SFPD had been the victim of "swatting": placing prank phone calls to police to lure them to mobilize SWAT teams to respond to fake hostage situations.
Courtesy of Myles Ma/Patch.comOn July 23, the Bergen County Police... View Full Size
New Jersey Swat Team Called in Response to 'Prank' Watch Video
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Say What? Bizarre 911 Calls Watch VideoSwatting has spread throughout the United States and Canada in recent months.
"Once you catch a swatter or a group that is committing these crimes, they are usually responsible for multiple swatting incidents," said Kevin Kolbye, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI's Dallas office, which headed the first federal swatting case in 2007. Kolbye has been piecing together what appeared to be isolated swatting cases around the country since 2004.
In the past, offenders have solicited private information about their intended victims from phone companies and slipped the victims' numbers into the caller ID of the 911 emergency system -- a method called spoofing.
But according to Kolbye, it doesn't take an experienced hacker to trigger a fake hostage situation and mobilize SWAT teams.
"It's not like it's a hard crime," he said. "It just takes somebody who has a little bit of savvy about computers and telephone systems."
Recent swatting incidents may be copycats of earlier crimes, Kolbye said, instigated by past offenders who brag about their methods on blogs.
"I think you find a lot of copycat violations," Kolbye said. "Same as you find when a highly publicized serial killer is around, you find a lot of copycatting. So when crimes receive national attention, you find people who are intrigued with this type of crime and they emulate it."
Swatting perpetrators tend to be males between in their 20s and 30s -- social misfits who mobilize SWAT teams for nothing more than "bragging rights," Kolbye said.
Swatting in Canada and the U.S.
In Canada, local media report that SWAT teams were prank called to family homes in North Toronto and British Columbia last month.
In Florida, the Hialeah Police Department received a teletype on Aug. 2 with information that a shooter, armed with an AR-15 rifle, was holding a victim hostage in a local home. Public information officer Det. Eddy Rodriguez said that after five hours of evacuating surrounding buildings and attempting contact with victims inside the home, the SWAT team broached the house. Nobody was home.
Forty members of the Bergen County Police Department SWAT team burst into the home of cyber expert Perry Aftab in Wyckoff, N.J., on July 23, responding to a caller who reported that he had already killed four people and taken several others hostage. When SWAT members entered the home fighting tear gas from four bombs they thrown through the windows, they were greeted only by a cat.
"I'm not laughing," said Wyckoff Police Chief Benjamin Fox, who was in lead command of the SWAT team.
Fox said that swatting drains local law enforcement of their already scarce resources and poses a danger to innocent victims who may accidentally get hurt.
"You've got police officers running around with high powered weapons acting under belief of a potential threat against them," he said. "What's if there's an accident? What if somebody innocently comes out of their house because of the hoax and it's perceived by officers of scene as someone else? After the fact, we would have to sort out that whole tragic situation which now has been elevated to another level."
All three recent U.S. swatting incidents are federal offenses that are under investigation. Perpetrators could face charges of conspiracy and fraud, which carry maximum penalties of five and 20 years in prison respectively.
"Each time they call, they leave an investigative trail: a piece of evidence," Kolbye said. "It's just a matter of time for us to continue to put all the pieces together and come knocking on their door."
Tuesday, 2 April 2013
FBI: 'Swatting' Cases Across The Country May Be Copycats - ABC News
FBI — The Cyber Threat: Planning for the Way Ahead
Director Mueller speaks to cyber security professionals in San Francisco. Read text of his remarks.
The Cyber Threat
Planning for the Way Ahead
02/28/13
Denial of service attacks, network intrusions, state-sponsored hackers bent on compromising our national security: The cyber threat is growing, and in response, said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, the Bureau must continue to strengthen its partnerships with other government agencies and private industry—and take the fight to the criminals.
“Network intrusions pose urgent threats to our national security and to our economy,” Mueller told a group of cyber security professionals in San Francisco today. “If we are to confront these threats successfully,” he explained, “we must adopt a unified approach” that promotes partnerships and intelligence sharing—in the same way we responded to terrorism after the 9/11 attacks.
Focus on Hackers and Intrusions
The FBI learned after 9/11 that “our mission was to use our skills and resources to identify terrorist threats and to find ways of disrupting those threats,” Mueller said. “This has been the mindset at the heart of every terrorism investigation since then, and it must be true of every case in the cyber arena as well.”
Partnerships that ensure the seamless flow of intelligence are critical in the fight against cyber crime, he explained. Within government, the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, which comprises 19 separate agencies, serves as a focal point for cyber threat information. But private industry—a major victim of cyber intrusions—must also be “an essential partner,” Mueller said, pointing to several successful initiatives.
The National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance, for example, is a model for collaboration between private industry and law enforcement. The Pittsburgh-based organization includes more than 80 industry partners—from financial services, telecommunications, retail, and manufacturing, among other fields—who work with federal and international partners to provide real-time threat intelligence.
Another example is the Enduring Security Framework, a group that includes leaders from the private sector and the federal government who analyze current—and potential—threats related to denial of service attacks, malware, and emerging software and hardware vulnerabilities.
Mueller also noted the Bureau’s cyber outreach efforts to private industry. The Domestic Security Alliance Council, for instance, includes chief security officers from more than 200 companies, representing every critical infrastructure and business sector. InfraGard, an alliance between the FBI and industry, has grown from a single chapter in 1996 to 88 chapters today with nearly 55,000 members nationwide. And just last week, the FBI held the first session of the National Cyber Executive Institute, a three-day seminar to train leading industry executives on cyber threat awareness and information sharing.
“As noteworthy as these outreach programs may be, we must do more,” Mueller said. “We must build on these initiatives to expand the channels of information sharing and collaboration.”
He added, “For two decades, corporate cyber security has focused principally on reducing vulnerabilities. These are worthwhile efforts, but they cannot fully eliminate our vulnerabilities. We must identify and deter the persons behind those computer keyboards. And once we identify them—be they state actors, organized criminal groups, or 18-year-old hackers—we must devise a response that is effective, not just against that specific attack, but for all similar illegal activity.”
“We need to abandon the belief that better defenses alone will be sufficient,” Mueller said. “Instead of just building better defenses, we must build better relationships. If we do these things, and if we bring to these tasks the sense of urgency that this threat demands,” he added, “I am confident that we can and will defeat cyber threats, now and in the years to come.”
Resources:
- Read Director Mueller’s remarks
- Cyber Crime page
- National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force
- National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance
- Infragard
FBI — The New Phenomenon of Swatting
Don’t Make the Call
The New Phenomenon of ‘Swatting’02/04/08
Remember the “phone phreakers?” The term hit our national consciousness in the 1970s, when a magazine reported on a small group of techie troublemakers who were hacking into phone companies’ computers and making free long-distance calls.
Today, there’s a new, much more serious twist on this old crime. It’s called “swatting,” and it involves calling 9-1-1 and faking an emergency that draws a response from law enforcement—usually a SWAT team.
Needless to say, these calls are dangerous to first responders and to the victims. The callers often tell tales of hostages about to be executed or bombs about to go off. The community is placed in danger as responders rush to the scene, taking them away from real emergencies. And the officers are placed in danger as unsuspecting residents may try to defend themselves.
Last year, for example, a 19-year-old Washington state man was charged by California authorities after pretending to be calling from the home of a married California couple, saying he had just shot and murdered someone. A local SWAT team arrived on the scene, and the husband, who had been asleep in his home with his wife and two young children, heard something and went outside to investigate—after first stopping in the kitchen to pick up a knife. What he found was a group of SWAT assault rifles aimed directly at him. Fortunately, the situation didn’t escalate, and no one was injured.
The schemes can also be fairly sophisticated. Consider the following case investigated by our Dallas office recently in concert with a range of partners:
- Five swatters in several states targeted people who were using online telephone party chat lines (or their family or friends).
- The swatters found personal details on the victims by accessing telecommunication company information stored on protected computers.
- Then, by manipulating computer and phone equipment, they called 9-1-1 operators around the country. By using “spoofing technology,” the swatters even made it look like the calls were actually coming from the victims!
- Between 2002 and 2006, the five swatters called 9-1-1 lines in more than 60 cities nationwide, impacting more than 100 victims, causing a disruption of services for telecommunications providers and emergency responders, and resulting in up to $250,000 in losses.
- “Swats” that the group committed included using bomb threats at sporting events, causing the events to be delayed; claiming that hotel visitors were armed and dangerous, causing an evacuation of the entire hotel; and making threats against public parks and officials.
Case work. The swatters were tracked down through the cooperative efforts of local, state, and federal agencies and the assistance of telecommunications providers and first responders. In all, the case involved more than 40 state and local jurisdictions in about a dozen states. All five subjects have pled guilty to various charges and are scheduled to be sentenced in 2008.
Why did they do it? Said Kevin Kolbye, Assistant Special Agent in Charge of our Dallas office: “Individuals did it for the bragging rights and ego, versus any monetary gain.” Basically, they did it because they could.
Law enforcement agencies at all levels are currently working with telecommunications providers around the country to help them address swatting activity.
You can help, too—if you believe you’ve been a victim of a “swat” please contact your local FBI office.
