An international group calling itself Evacuation Squad has claimed credit for calling in bomb threats that closed dozens of schools worldwide this month. The latest threats came Monday, when six schools in Sydney, Australia, were forced to close, and a representative for the group told Mashable there are more to come.
Evacuation Squad member “Viktor Olyavich” gave Mashable more details than you’d expect from a member of an international criminal prank group, claiming that his squad is made up of six people and mainly uses servers in Russia and Iran. They’ve been operating through a stolen voice-over IP account that had a surplus of prepaid credit, making them difficult to trace.
“We do these threats because they are funny to us,” he said.
“Olyavich” boasted that his team will close any school, business, or sports venue by request, but he said they plan to start charging for their services (paid in Bitcoin, of course) on March 1.
“We are preparing to do schools across Europe as we speak,” he said.
Mashable reported that no authority, including Sydney’s police department, has officially confirmed Evacuation Squad’s involvement in the school closures. However, police did confirm the threats came in over the phone via an electronic message.
Twitter has also suspended two of Evacuation Squad’s accounts, @Ev4cuati0nSquad and @SwatTheW0rld, from which they claimed credit for the bomb threats.
