CNN host Wolf Blitzer is the latest victim of 'swatting,' a hoax in which a fake distress call sends authorities to your home.
At 6:25 p.m. Saturday, Montgomery County police got an urgent message saying that someone had been shot at Blitzer's Bethesda home.
Officers set up a perimeter and started advancing on the house before a dispatch supervisor confirmed the message was a fraud with CNN.
A victim of 'swatting,' a fraudulent emergency message sent law enforcement to Wolf Blitzer's home
Blitzer was not in Bethesda at the time.
'CNN security checked it out with the Montgomery police department....It was totally fake,' said a CNN spokeswoman. 'Wolf is fine. That's what matters most.'
Blitzer himself was unavailable for comment.
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Previous 'swatting' victims include celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, Tom Cruise, Selena Gomez, Justin Timberlake, and Russel Brand.
Sending teams to respond to fake emergencies can waste tens of thousands of dollars in manpower and time that could be going to real problems, The Washington Post reported.
Blitzer is the latest celebrity to fall victim to the craze, after Justin Timberlake, Tom Cruise, and many others
'If somebody’s shot, we believe they’re dead or could be dead, we have to get there fast,' Montgomery Police Capt. Paul Starks told reporters. 'People are responding with lights and sirens, so there’s the potential for danger there.
'You’re diverting resources that might otherwise . . . go elsewhere to respond and resolve an actual emergency.'
While there are no reliable numbers to tell how often 'swatting' happens, Roger Hixson, technical issues director at the National Emergency Association, said 'it seems like every couple weeks we hear about one...It's not a huge problem, but it's not trivial either.'
'In some of the larger cases like this, the actual cost can be over $100,000 in equipment and time and that kind of thing,' he added. 'The bigger issue is those people and that equipment aren’t available for a real emergency if it occurs in that time frame.'
Brian Krebs, an Internet security writer hit by a 'swatting' in March, said that changing communications technologies can make fooling the authorities a simple trick.
Blitzer was out of town when he was targeted and CNN confirmed the host was fine
The cops that took the report from me after the incident said someone had called 911 using a caller ID number that matched my mobile phone number,' he wrote on KrebsOnSecurity. 'Obviously that was not the case.' To swat Blitzer, the culprit used a text message meant to appear as if it was from the newsman himself.
The message's origin has yet to be traced, but whoever sent it used a mobile phone company's 'relay' system.