Bomb threats hit about 20 Massachusetts schools in April 2016 via computer-generated robocalls that mask their origin through overseas servers. Cybersecurity expert Robert Siciliano shows how readily available robocall services let anyone spoof a caller ID and launch scripted calls with one button. Authorities struggle to trace the calls or stop them.
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Tonight, the effort to stop what are becoming all too frequent bomb threats to local schools. They're frightening and they're disruptive. Today, threats were called into more than a dozen schools, and we started digging into where they came from. Christina Hager's live tonight in Hudson with a story all new at 5. Christina?
Lisa Hudson, hi here. This is one of the schools targeted this morning. Many, many, many schools getting bomb threats called in one right after the other. It's a new kind of prank that's causing some serious problems. Another round of computer-generated phone calls with school bomb threats like this one at the beginning of the year. Now it's Hudson.
Well, it started basically just over the loudspeakers. We heard, so there's a bomb threat and we're going to slowly not evacuate the building but get everybody into the gym.
Hudson is among about 20 schools in the latest batch of threats from Boston to Billerica to Lemonster, naming a few. A source close to the investigation tells us in the past such calls were traced to Russia.
Unfortunately, it's very difficult to stop.
Cybersecurity expert Robert Siciliano of Hotspot Shield showed us how easy it is to find robocall services.
And as you can see right off the top, custom caller ID number, which means that they are facilitating the process of you changing your caller ID to mask who you are. And you just provide them with a list of phone numbers you want to call and a script and you just hit a button and all of that takes place right in front of you.
But I can't even speculate on why somebody would be doing this. Hudson School Superintendent Jodi Fortuna. It's really amazing. It's unprecedented, I think. You know, we had it earlier in the year, and then for it to happen again now is just remarkable. And it's unfortunate because I think in a lot of ways it takes very valuable public safety resources away from other things.
And what's troubling for authorities, one source close to the investigation tells us the pranksters are using masking programs so they can't be traced. It just goes back to a server overseas. In Hudson, Christina Hager, WBZ News. Lisa, back to you.
Makes you so mad. All right, Christina, thank you.
