A spam campaign with a difference is causing widespread alarm across the western world with a threat to detonate a bomb if the recipient doesn’t make a bitcoin payment.

The campaign involves a number of messages in English with a common theme: that the sender has used someone to plant a bomb in the recipient’s building and that the bomb will be detonated if a payment of $20,000 in bitcoin is not forthcoming.

Some emails suggest that if police are contacted, that the bomb will be exploded while others say that they have an agent or mercenary near the recipient’s building ready to detonate the explosive device.

So I actually just got a bomb threat in my work email today ordering me to send the person $20,000 via bitcoin or they will blow up my place of work…. 2018 is wild pic.twitter.com/sn0vVLwe6v

— Ryan William Grant (@TheeRyanGrant) December 13, 2018

How many of these spam emails have been sent is not clear. Bleepingcomputer pegged the number of emails at 15,000 as of 12:48 p.m. EST, but ZDNet claimed the number is in the millions.

Irrespective of the number, the bomb threats are being taken seriously, with multiple reports of police being called and offices being evacuated. They have been reported as being received in English-speaking countries: The U.K., Australia, Canada and the U.S., as well as a number of European countries.

The office of Infinity Ward, developer of the popular “Call of Duty” franchise, was reported to have been evacuated after a bomb threat, while five stations on the Toronto Subway were also evacuated.  One report suggested that local police have been forced to evacuate buildings and send bomb squads to investigate all over the U.S., swamping authorities with phone calls throughout the day.

The unprecedented nature of the spam campaign has forced police departments in multiple jurisdictions to call for calm.

At this time, it appears that these threats are meant to cause disruption and/or obtain money. We’ll respond to each call regarding these emails to conduct a search but we wanted to share this information so the credibility of these threats can be assessed as likely NOT CREDIBLE.

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) December 13, 2018

Tim Erlin, vice president of product management and strategy at the cybersecurity firm Tripwire Inc., told SiliconANGLE that all it takes is one successful payout to make this scheme worthwhile for the perpetrator.

“This is a high-risk extortion attempt because there’s no doubt it would garner significant attention from law enforcement,” he said. “At this point, it’s unclear if there’s an additional motive beyond extortion.”

Still, he said, it will be taken seriously by authorities. “There will be an in-depth investigation into who is behind this campaign, and it’s likely they’ll be identified,” he said.

Image: Pixabay