
It has recently been revealed that Roberts was the latest victim of an increasing trend called “swatting”, whereby the police get sent to someone’s house in response to a hoax call.
“An armed response team turned up at my house in the middle of the night,” Roberts said. “I wasn’t actually there – I was on holiday. The first thing I knew was when our au pair contacted us the next morning to tell us that at 03:30 she’d been woken up and disturbed by a SWAT team of five armed policemen, three unarmed policemen and a police dog.” Roberts claimed that the police had received a report of a man prowling round the house with a gun. According to a spokesperson from the police, it had been suggested that a man had murdered a woman at Roberts’ address. This was followed by a second call during which the caller stated he had members of his family held in a room. This call was assessed as requiring a firearms response.Read more on cyber security:
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Both the swatting and DDoS attacks are believed to be linked to twitter user @DadSecurity, who reportedly claimed responsibility for both before deleting the account. According to the BBC, the account repeatedly posted “RIP Mumsnet” and claimed to have stolen data from the site before being blocked.
It’s certainly not the first time that swatting has been used as part of a grudge match. In 2014, an intense session of online gaming turned nasty when a 70-man SWAT team was called in to arrest a 17 year-old gamer by a disgruntled opponent on the video game “Call of Duty”.
Similarly, webcam footage captured a SWAT team arresting an online gamer after a hoax call claimed he was armed and dangerous. Here’s the footage:Share this story