The Polish Foreign Intelligence Service (AW) points to the Russian special services being behind a series of fake bomb threat emails which were sent out to nearly 700 schools during the 2019 examination period in Poland.
A precise investigation of the emails’ content directed the Polish experts to servers located in St. Petersburg.
These Russian-based servers had already been used in the past to spread different content meant to instill chaos in different parts of the world, according to Polish intelligence.
The creators of the disinformation campaign were also identified, as they used accounts belonging to the Russian foreign military intelligence agency (GRU).
The whole operation involved false bomb scare emails and messages appearing on the Russian servers first followed by moderators encouraging web users to send these false alarms to schools where final exams were being held.
The actual bomb threat messages were sent by web users who were unaware they were acting in Russia’s interests. Some of these bomb threats were also sent from automated accounts.
