Delhi Police to Send Request to Russia on School Bomb Threats.
According to a report by The Times of India, the Delhi Police is planning to seek assistance from the Union home ministry and the court to send a Letter Rogatory (LR) to Russia in order to investigate the recent bomb threat emails that were sent to more than 200 schools in Delhi-NCR. This LR, a formal request from a court to a foreign court, is crucial in obtaining information about the email ID used to send the threats and is an important step in the ongoing investigation.
The police have already reached out to the National Central Bureau (NCB) in Moscow and the Russian mailing service company Mail.ru through Interpol in an effort to track down the origin of the emails.
During the investigation, authorities discovered that a school in south Delhi had received a hoax threat email in 2023. The email was sent using the mail service mail.ru, which was the same service used in a previous incident. The email was sent on May 12, as reported by TOI.
Upon receiving the request for information, Russian authorities quickly responded, identifying the sender’s IP address as 188.172.220.76 located in Austria. It was determined that the sender had utilized a virtual private network (VPN) to conceal their true location. An unnamed senior officer stated, “Russia promptly provided us with information regarding the IP address used by the sender, which was traced back to Austria. The sender had employed a virtual private network to conceal their identity.”
However, as stated by a cyber security professional, identifying the IP address and sender details may prove challenging if a VPN or proxy server was utilized to send the email, as per PTI reports.
The expert further highlighted that certain mailing services, such as ‘mail.ru’, allow users to create accounts without undergoing authentication and verification processes. Additionally, these services offer the option to create temporary email addresses, as reported by PTI.
In recent events, over 200 schools in Delhi-NCR received similar bomb threat emails earlier this week, leading to widespread evacuations and searches. This resulted in a state of panic among parents who hurried to retrieve their children.
