Swatting, is this a big problem?E

Hi all,

I want to go more in depth with the following, but would like to post this for now. There are two articles through Krebs on Security, and even the news has covered this. First article is Kansas Man Killed In ‘SWATting’ Attack and the second is <a href=”Serial Swatter “SWAuTistic” Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes. I’m a little surprised that this type of activity is still going on today, especially with all of what is happening with the big time breaches.

KNX even mentioned this in a news story through a segment during the 1 PM PT hour in a segment called More In Depth. Suspect In Fatal Swatting Hoax Appears In LA Court, Will Not Fight Extradition so this means he’ll go to Kansas to be charged with murder or another crime depending on what they want to do.

Swatting is not normal, and I mixed up my words this evening talking to someone that lives here, and I am not going to mix it up for the article. Here is what Wikipedia says about Swatting. In the KNX report I heard this afternoon during the news segment I told you about above, the gentleman involved had a way to have his number look like he was in the state. Then he called someone and reported the incident. This whole thing started in an online forum, and another gentleman was giving the one who did it the wrong adress. The gentleman who did this feels bad a guy died, and said he’d rather do bomb threats instead of direct swatting.

Krebs on Security did a great job covering this in both stories I’ve linked above.

The KNX segment was also interesting, the news anchor asked what can be done. The guy interviewed did say that this was tricky, because you don’t nbecessarily call 911, they just call the emergency number and use a service to make it look like you’re in the state. Here are my thoughts.

First, get the telephone number of the caller. I’m not sure what number this guy gave, but when getting the number, call the number back if possible. The reason for the number being called back is simple. If someone other than the original caller answers, you know there is nothing up. In a real emergency, you’d be able to hear something going on. With the callback method in a non-emergency situation, you have time to figure out if this is real or fake. Seeing that the caller gave a number in the area, and not his own, you’d either get a disconnected number or you’d get someone else.

If the gentleman called 911 from a state bound number, than you can’t call back, you’d have your tools handy to tell where the call was coming from. You could use that data, and background noise, to determine if something was going on. If there was a hostage situation, you definitely in my opinion not be calm like the reports indicate.

Always make sure that the information you are given is correct. I’m sure emergency services already does this, but it isn’t a bad idea to say so here.

Do you, the reader, have any thoughts on this? Do report your thoughts.

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