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Hacker arrested for wave of fake bomb and shooting threats against schools

FBI agents have arrested a 20-year-old man alleged to have been part of a hacking gang that not only launched distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks but also launched a wave of bomb and shooting threats against thousands of schools in the United States and United Kingdom.

Timothy Dalton Vaughn of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, is alleged to be a member of the Apophis Squad, a group of self-styled hackers who targeted businesses, institutions and individuals in 2018.

Using a variety of online handles including “WantedbyFeds,” “Wanted,” “HDGZero,” “Hacker_R_US” and “Xavier Farbel,” Vaughn was allegedly behind a series of bomb and shooting threats, DDoS attacks, website defacements and swatting incidents where armed police units are summoned to a victim’s house to investigate a fictitious violent crime.

Documents unsealed this week reveal that Vaughn faces an 11-count federal indictment including charges of making interstate threats involving explosives. The indictment makes for chilling reading, and it’s easy to imagine how concerned schools and teachers would be to receive emails like this one:

Hello, you have made a choice to not listen to us. I got bullied at this school and you did nothing. Now you will understand the true mean of pain. I am coming into school with 3 bombs, and a .22 hand gun. If I see any staff or student I will shoot them and kill them. When I run out of bullets, I will slit there throats and watch them bleed out on the floor. If I see any police at the school I will blowup the bombs.

Or this, which refers to the genuine mass-shooting at Columbine High School in 1999:

Hello, a male student will be sent into your campus as you start the day, he will look normal but what is in his bag is a bomb. The (Read more...)