The employees and facilities of the studio that first introduced the "Call of Duty" franchise to the public were recently threatened by a bomb threat. While the Infinity Ward offices have been evacuated with its employees safe, it seems the incident is connected to a nationwide effort from a malicious individual or group.
According to PC Gamer, the Infinity Ward offices in Los Angeles were evacuated under the advisement of local law enforcement officers after a potential bomb threat on the employees and facilities was received. The publication notes that the potential bomb threat to the Infinity Ward offices coincides with a recent wave of bomb threats in multiple cities across the country. Activision has yet to provide an official statement about the incident.
GameSpot notes that the threats were received by multiple institutions through a spam email demanding a significant sum of bitcoin and for the institutions to not reach out to the police. As the publication mentions, the spam email claims to have an operative in the specific sites targeted by the threat to activate the explosive devices unless the emails' demands have been met.
Fortunately for most citizens of the affected cities, it appears that no explosive devices have been found in the premises of most designate targets. American law enforcement agencies such as the New York Police Department believe that the bomb threat is likely to be not credible and is simply an extortion activity that was simply intended to cause disruption. An explosive device has yet to be found in the vicinity of the Infinity Ward offices as well.
According to NBC, the bomb threats currently span from America to Canada with potentially a dozen targets already reported in Los Angeles alone. PC Gamer notes that the evacuation of the Infinity Ward offices could be related to the recent bomb threat wave that is allegedly demanding a $20,000 Bitcoin payment to prevent the attacks.
The publication notes that bomb threats have appeared in Canadian soil in Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and British Columbia. On American soil, the publication notes that the Bronx High School of Science in New York and the Columbine High School in Colorado were also targets of the bomb threat yet explosive devices were also not found in the premises of the institutions.
NBC notes that the institutions most likely received the spam emails that claim the bomb threats as the emails used for sending the threats are considered "clean" emails. It seems that whoever has sent the bomb threat has phished and hacked email accounts without any prior record of malicious behavior leading to concerns of data privacy.
