Murder threats via email

Several students and employees had a nasty surprise when they checked their email account last week. An email from a person claiming to be a hit man who wants money not to take on the job of killing the recipient, has been sent to IT users at the university in several different versions. The exact number of people at the University of Oslo (UiO) who have received this frightening email is at this point unclear.

– This is a known extortion case. We encourage students and employees not to reply to this email, says Margrete Raaum, Chief Security Officer at the University’s Centre for Information Technology (USIT).

Because of the serious and unpleasant nature of the case, Raaum advises recipients of this email to report the matter to the police.

– This is an international case, and therefore it is important that the Norwegian police force is also involved, says Raaum.

The FBI, who is investigating the matter, is now warning against a possible follow-up email in which the sender claims to be from the FBI. In this email, the person claims that the FBI has arrested a person who had the recipient’s name on a piece of paper in their pocket.

– This is of course nonsense as well. If the FBI had found such a thing, they would naturally contact Norwegian police. They would never send an email directly to the person in question, says Raaum.

UiO has previously been the victim of several unpleasant spam-related incidents, but these have mostly been of a sexual nature. However, this is not the only challenge that has faced the university IT system lately.

Bente Christine Aasgaard, Postmaster at USIT, says that several people have also experienced attempts at «fishing», meaning that a person claims to be someone else, in order to gain sensitive information such as bank account numbers and so forth.

– How can you prevent UiO from being the victim of these kinds of emails in the future?

– We have recently put new filters into the UiO system. These are of a very high quality. The problem is that students and employees do not use them, Aasgaard states.

The current arrangement regarding filters at the university is that you must activate them yourself.

– The reason for so few using the filters may be down to poor information, Aasgaard admits.

She can tell us that the university will in the near future put automatic filters into place, so that you must actively turn the filter off yourself if you do not want it.

– We still do not know whether this kind of arrangement would filter out a threatening email such as this one, she says.