Bomb threats with the warning “time is running out” were sent to TV broadcasters in Europe this Friday, prompting evacuations of locations and the suspension of programming.
The alerts were sent to the Irish broadcaster RTE, the British Sky, the Bulgarian private broadcaster Nova TV, and others, the companies said. No bomb was found at any of the affected sites. RTE’s programming was replaced with music and a pre-recorded message, in some cases for up to three hours.
The alerts follow a series of false bomb threats that affected passenger flights at various locations across Europe in recent days, forcing diversions, emergency landings and security sweeps, although no explosive device has been found to date.
They also come amid a growing sense of unease about hacker scams in recent weeks, including cyberattacks on supermarkets.
“We want the world to know about us, and that’s why one of our agents placed an explosive device in your building,” said an email received by Nova and RTE on Friday. “It will detonate in 45 minutes. Time is running out.”
It is not clear who was behind Friday’s hoaxes.
The emails sent to RTE and Nova were signed with the name Mikhail Andropov, with a message stating that the author was one of the leaders of a group responsible for the airplane hoaxes this week.
“But this is only the beginning. What happened this week is only a small part of what awaits Europe in the near future,” the message added.
The alleged author shares the surname with Yuri Andropov, former Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The email’s subject line, “MESSAGE TO THE WEST,” echoes the title of a biography of Andropov called “New Challenge to the West.”
It was not clear whether this was a sign of Russian involvement or an attempt to point the finger at Moscow.
Police arrived at Nova’s newsroom in Sofia, which was evacuated, searched and deemed safe. The transmission was not interrupted and the staff returned to their desks, the presenters said.
At RTE, staff returned to the campus after a police sweep that lasted more than three hours.
Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin said security agencies in Europe had not yet determined whether the threats to air travel and to media organizations were being carried out by individuals or as part of a coordinated attack.
“This just illustrates how it can be relatively easy to cause disruption and compromise the normal functioning of society through non-conventional activities of this kind, which aim to cause disruption, fear and anxiety,” Martin told RTE radio shortly after the resumption of news programming from an outside broadcasting unit.
“We need to stay calm,” he added.
