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The horror that unfolded at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis on Wednesday is one that a relatively small number of Americans have actually had to experience- but what if the 911 calls that urged police to the site of the shooting had been a false alarm? What if the calls were placed to hide a different kind of criminal or terrorist incident? It’s called “swatting”, and according to John Cohen, ABC News consultant and former counterterrorism coordinator for DHS, it is a threat we should take more seriously. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Mendte in the Morning program to explain why.
Cohen told host Larry Mendte that foreign agents or criminals do it by placing a series of calls to overwhelm police and security systems. “We have seen foreign cyber actors, threat actors, targeting police 911 systems. They’re called “denial of service” attacks. So, they use cyber attacks to make those 911 systems inoperable, which means you can’t pick up the phone and call the police in an emergency. We’re seeing cyberattacks directed at state and local governments so that they can’t share information, they can’t issue business licenses, their jail management systems don’t work… It can shut down an information network, yes, it can mean sensitive credit card and other data can be stolen, but there’s also very real-world implications that can impact the public safety.”
As a reminder how disruptive phony mass-911 calls can be, Cohen referenced to the active shooter hoax that disrupted move-in day last week at Villanova University: “Just in the past week, we’ve seen universities across the United States targeted by a cyber-criminal group at the same time that the city of Minneapolis experienced an actual real mass shooting, so this is the environment that law enforcement is dealing with right now.”
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