Swatting Attacks Increase Security Concerns Across Silicon Valley

Swatting Attacks Increase Security Concerns Across Silicon Valley

Excerpt From https://www.wsj.com

 

By Robert McMillan and Jeff Horwitz
May 9, 2019 8:00 a.m. ET

One January night this year an emergency dispatch operator in Palo Alto, Calif., fielded a call from a man who said he had shot his wife and then tied up his children inside his house, where he had several pipe bombs. After a tense period in which police officers surrounded the house, out came the owner, a senior Facebook Inc. FB +0.74% executive who said there was no shooting and that he had no idea what was going on.

The call was a hoax, but not an isolated incident.

Just over two weeks later, an Instagram executive at his home in San Francisco was also the target of a swatting attack, in which the perpetrator masquerades as a certain individual and calls up local law enforcement, claiming to have committed violent crimes at the target’s address.

The incidents show why safety concerns are rising across Silicon Valley, prompting tech companies to allocate more dollars to executive security…

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