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University of Pittsburgh Deluged With Internet Bomb Threats
An anonymous reader writes "The University of Pittsburgh has been plagued with 78 bomb threats (and counting) since February 14. It started low-tech, with handwritten notes, but has progressed to anonymous emails. Nearly every campus building has been a target. The program suspected is anonymous mailer Mixmaster. The university has been evacuating each building when threats come in (day or night), and police departments from around Allegheny County have offered assistance with clearing each building floor by floor with bomb sniffing dogs. There is a popular tracking blog set up by a student as well as a growing Reddit community. Is there any foreseeable defense (forensic or socially engineered) to a situation like this?"
Defense=stop taking every bomb threat as a credible threat.
The internet is leaking!
bad writing
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
I always taught that responding these threats was stupid. No terrorist is dumb enough to tell you where will they strike.
I think the solution to this problem is to ignore bomb threats when you have every reason to believe that they are fake.
You simply cannot really catch someone if he does nothing other then writing notes and does not screw up.
There are many ways you could go about informing the police/faculty of a bomb with no risk of getting caught.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You can solve this problem by just bombing the place yourself.
I wonder if the Allegheny County police get paid extra every time they have to respond to one of these threats, similar to how some fire depts get extra pay for responding to fire alarms. They wouldn't have much motivation to change this situation if they are profiting from it.
Blow up the buildings before someone else can.
My money is either on a disgruntled ex-groundskeeper, or a computer security/polySci professor trying to make a point.
Have there been any mentions in the letters/emails as to why they're making the threats? Did someone fail an exam, want to get OUT of exams...?
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
Perhaps they shouldn't have set up the "submit an anonymous bomb threat" web site?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Really? Equating an entire population of people (students, profs, etc.) with a few corrupt administrators? One guy with a gun could deal with the pedos and his supporters, you don't need to blow up innocent people. TL;DR you're an idiot.
Somebody set up us the bomb?
It's just a false-flag event to shut down anonymity online. Before you know it a bill is going to be introduced to make anonymous email illegal.
Jerry Sandusky worked for Penn State - this is the University of Pittsburgh.
Duh. Then they can't blow it up.
For Great Justice!
University of Pittsburgh is NOT Pennsylvania State University.
And for what it's worth, why would you want to punish an entire school for what a couple administrative and athletic folks have done? There were a lot of people who went to Penn State who were revolted by Sandusky's behavior. These are people with lives, with bills to pay, with careers to start. If anything, punish the athletic program and the administration, which were both complicit in the scandal. But don't punish the professors and students who are just trying to make a living, and who did nothing to contribute to the scandal.
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Lots of universities in the Pittsburgh area are getting bomb threats. I know CCAC is getting a bunch of them, too. They're now checking everyone's bags when they go into the building.
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Soon enough someone will catch on that they can really increase their law enforcement power/budget/detail/department, pass some laws, and maybe get rid of some civil rights because of this. If enough people get pissed off enough, they will happily trade some freedoms for making this all go away.
I'm surprised the TSA hasn't jumped in on this, setting up checkpoints and searching people anywhere they want on campus. Its the perfect situation to lend credibility to their viper program.
Cut internet access. Force this jack ass to use a phone. More easily traceable.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Then, once the perp is caught, shave their skin off and toss him or her in a pit for people to pee on them. Then toss in sea water and add sharks.
If you can fish his or her head out before the sharks eat it, put it on a stick in the main square.
You will never have this problem again.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Virginia Tech found a domestic murder case in a dorm five years ago, police came, followed standard procedure. Four hours later 30 more students and the assailant were dead after a horrific shooting spree on the opposite side of campus. Nothing like it had ever happened before on any US campus, and probably had never happened anywhere in the US in historical memory. Two of the victims parents sued the school for not notifying the student body earlier to warn them that the domestic violence case they had contained earlier that morning would erupt into the worst school shooting in US history, and won.
You want to know how to destroy a school - stop responding to any threats, credible or not. If a real bomb does go off, the school will never survive.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Decentralize.
Get rid of the campus, and operate entirely online. Students take their courses online, they get graded online, and because there is no central meeting place, there is no place that would make an effective bomb target, whether a warning is given or not.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Is there any foreseeable defense (forensic or socially engineered) to a situation like this?
Not if you also want an internet that maintains any kind of privacy.
(Spudley Strikes Again!)
Sandusky wasn't at Pittsburgh, though, was he? The football program is in the town of State College. There are rumors that there is some sort of university associated with the football program. Over 99.9% of the 100,000+ students and faculty had nothing to do with the extra-extra-curricular activities of the assistant football coach.
the BOFH at the university of pittsburg shrugged and remarked, "check with that new CS PHD who just had to have his crontab restored on a saturday night. Its been filling up the outbound mail spool all damn day."
Good people go to bed earlier.
At one university I went to, students who were not ready for their midterms did the fire alarm pull. At a different university, it was anonymous bomb threats via payphone. Anyone got any other delaying tactics at institutions they attended?
You want to know how to destroy a school - stop responding to any threats, credible or not. If a real bomb does go off, the school will never survive.
The real threat seems to be the lawyers.
... some idiot student is laughing at how easy it is to throw the school into a frenzy and have an excuse to not go to the classes that his parents would otherwise force him to attend.
I hope they catch the "bomber".
They'll track some trace DNA evidence on one of the earlier handwritten notes back to the perp. If that won't work, they can do a simple chemical analysis of the ink used and track all purchasers of that brand of pen to the suspect. Failing that, there are certainly some ATM cameras within a few thousand yards whose image, when suitably blown up, will give a clear photo of the person delivering the note.
But as we all know, its just a matter of having that blond gal with the thick glasses and pigtails back at FBI HQ trace the e-mail back to its source (using a suitably animated GUI).
Have gnu, will travel.
Yeah, I originally had a tag line ...or kill all the lawyers. I may as well ask for a pony and free beer if I go that far, though.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Then everyone, all students, their families, all staff, all faculty, have to sign a waiver enjoining them from suing in the event that there is a threat and it turns out to be genuine. Otherwise, the university must take everything seriously on account of if it happens to be real and they don't respond, they'll be sued in to non-existence.
Two of the victims parents sued the school for not notifying the student body earlier to warn them that the domestic violence case they had contained earlier that morning would erupt into the worst school shooting in US history, and won.
No, that's a over-simplification of what happened. There were several issues.
The campus police department didn't have the authority, nor the mechanism to directly issue an emergency alert to the student body telling them "to stay inside and lock their doors because a shooter was on the loose", so even when they knew what was happening, which took a very long while in itself, they still couldn't notify the entire school without going first through an outdated manual and a barrage of school officials that acted as the gatekeepers to that system.
Stop and use your head. Consider the result, if just once, they don't evacuate and something horrible happens.
Depends - if there have been this number of threats and no actual evidence of any bombs then it is logical to conclude it is a prank. If you want to make a credible threat you have to do something like the IRA used to do in the UK. They had arranged code words so it was clear that the bomb threat came from them plus, every so often, they did leave a real device just enough so that the threats could not be ignored. Of course this was when they were wanting to cause major disruption by shutting down stations etc - when the bastards just wanted to kill there was no warning at all.
This is terrorism done right. Except the threat frequency should be dialed down to the point where each one must be viewed as credible. And the program should be duplicated across hundreds of campuses across the United States. Not to mention other facilities besides universities. And, every once in a while, one of the threats should turn out to be genuine, just to keep people honest. Cheap and effective.
There is a difference of knowing a gunman has killed two and is at large, then random bomb threat.
And it was a murder case, not a domestic violence case. They thought the murder that occurred was spurred from domestic violence..and it was.
Not that warning the student body would have done anything other then put a bunch more targets in the gun mans sights.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
No, teh real threat is a jury that sees an emotion mother and then stops thinking about the merits of the case.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I see at least two idiots in this comment thread.
The only credible bomb threats I can recall were the ones done by the IRA in the 80s. What is the point of planting a bomb and then telling everyone about it? What a real terrorist would do is call in a threat and have a bomb planted at the evacuation point.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Curious that the conversation centers in if the thread are real or not instead of how easily is to completely disrupt normal activities and cause incredible spending. Reminds me a lot of the statement by Al Queda that for every dolar they spend the US loses thousands. Makes me wonder how much of US economic activity (jobs/money) now resides with security and vigilance of all sorts.
The real threat seems to be the lawyers.
Lawyers are a tool, like any other. They don't act on their own, but only when called into service.
The real threat is the asshole who hires the lawyers.
If they ever take my stapler...
The real threat seems to be the lawyers.
Normally, I would agree... Lawyers do have a tendency to leech off society.
However, in this case they are probably saving lies. Admittedly it is probably unintentional in cases like these. In their greedy lust for money, the threat of possible lawsuits if an actual bomb does explode, will continue to have the university look out for the welfare of its students and staff regardless of the number of false alarms.
Looking for a job?
Want your resume written professionally?
DON'T USE TUNAREZ!!!
Why don't we let the students figure it out?
The US warned Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Just a little background, there was a shooting at Western Psych which is part of the University of Pittsburgh on March 8th that left 2 dead and 7 wounded. The Pitt police are going to take any threat to the university and the surrounding buildings very seriously. I also doubt that who wrote the initial bomb threats on the bathroom stalls is the same person or people who are doing the anonymous emailings. The FBI has been involved from the start as well as CMU which borders Pitts campus. It is a serious pain in the ass for anyone in the Oakland area. I know that the employees and students affected would not mind a public flogging considering the university has 36 floors....
The solution is so simple: Legalize bombs! It works for guns, doesn't it?
geekoid,
Your posts are fucking annoying to read because you use 'than' and 'then' incorrectly in every instance. They're not typos. They're not isolated mistakes. You have a complete misunderstanding of how to use both words. Your posts are jarring to read, and you can't be taken seriously.
Pitt and Penn State are two completely different Universities. Pitt is to Penn State what Israel is to Syria.
"I have as much authority as the pope, I just
don't have as many people who believe it" - George Carlin