The bomb threats targeting Indian airlines continued to escalate unabated on Friday with over six SpiceJet flights receiving fresh threats.
The bomb threats targeting Indian airlines continued to escalate unabated on Friday with over six SpiceJet flights receiving fresh threats, said officials.
Signalling a worrying trend, over 70 flights received fresh threats within a span of 24 hours on Thursday. These threats targeted 20 flights from Air India, 20 from Indogo, 20 from Vistara and another 13 from Akasa Airlines.
The Central government is planning wide-ranging legislative actions to deal with bomb threats to airlines, including placing the perpetrators on the no-fly list.
The government has requested social media platforms Meta and X to provide data on hoax bomb threat messages directed at airlines. It has also begun identifying the individuals responsible for these threats, which affected over 70 flights on Thursday.
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250 Flights Disrupted In Last 11 Days
In just 11 days, over 250 flights operated by Indian carriers have received bomb threats, primarily communicated via social media. According to high-level government sources, authorities have identified some of the perpetrators and are taking appropriate action, claimed reports.
A group of tech experts is suspected of targeting Indian airlines with hoax bomb threats, according to 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.
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According to a senior government official, despite 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.
