Bomb threats on Indian airlines becomes order of the day.
Recently there has been continuous bomb threats on flights panicking passengers on board.
Till Thursday over 70 flights have received fresh threats within a span of 24 hours. These threats targeted 20 flights from Air India, 20 from Indogo, 20 from Vistara and another 13 from Akasa Airlines, according to the latest tally.
More than 170 flights in a week operated by the Indian carriers have received bomb threats. Plans are afoot by the central government for wide-ranging legislative actions to deal with bomb threats to airlines, including placing the perpetrators on the no-fly list.
Reportedly, Akasa Air Emergency Response teams are monitoring the situation and are in touch with the security and regulatory authorities. As per spokesperson of the airlines, they are following all safety and security procedures in coordination with local authorities,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The ‘big’ question is who is behind such bomb threats.
The spate of bomb threats targeting Indian airlines reflects a worrying pattern that impinges upon the safety of travellers and crew members.
Couple of days ago, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology held a meeting in Delhi on with officials from airlines and social media giants X and Meta regarding the hoaxes, which have delayed or canceled over 100 flights.
Reportedly, group of tech experts is suspected of targeting Indian airlines with hoax bomb threats, as per the initial analysis conducted by central cyber agencies who also said no activity has been detected from the IP addresses used to send the threats through social media handles and emails. The exit nodes of these addresses are VPNs.
According to a senior government official, notwithstanding evidence that VPNs were used, very limited support has been received from intermediaries. The relevant companies have been asked to provide details to trace the actual IP addresses.
Officials reveal that While there are no activities on the IP addresses being tracked, initial analysis indicates that this has been carried out by a group of multiple tech experts who are knowledgeable about the processes of technical tracing and tracking of handles and email IDs
On Wednesday, the Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology blasted social media platform X through which most of these hoaxes were circulated. The platforms were also suggested to use Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based mechanism to block any accounts that send out bulk messages/posts about bombs.
According to a senior police officer, the threats messages were received through anonymous posts on X which were later suspended by the authorities. The officer said three accounts on social media platform X have been found involved in posting threat messages to fights.
The first case was registered on October 16 following a bomb threat received via X, targeting a Bengaluru-bound Akasa Air flight. The aircraft, carrying over 180 passengers, was forced to return to the national capital.
The police wrote to social media platform X the next day seeking details of the accounts that posted threatening messages but the force was not able to get the details of the user’s ID or domain. “It was suspected that the handler used VPN (Virtual private network) or dark web browser to set up the accounts on X and then posted the messages from more than one account
News Edit KV Raman