Alumni email account at Taiwan university suspected in Italy bomb threats to more than 6,000 schools
Some schools evacuated students and staff as a precaution; police found no explosives, while the sender and source of the attack remain under investigation.
Schools in several parts of Italy received mass bomb-threat emails on the 11th, affecting more than 6,000 public schools nationwide. Some schools evacuated students as a precaution and notified parents to pick up their children. Screenshots published by Italian media showed that the sender account used a Taiwan Da-Yeh University domain. The university's initial investigation indicated that an alumnus's email account may have been hacked, while the sender's identity and the source of the attack remain unclear.
According to a Central News Agency report, the threats were sent at about 9:50 a.m. local time in Italy on the 11th. The messages claimed that bombs equipped with remote detonators had been planted inside schools and were signed with the Russian name “Mikhail Andropov.”
Screenshots published by Italian media showed that the messages came from an email account using a Da-Yeh University domain in Taiwan. The account's display name was “劉芳君.” Da-Yeh University said its preliminary checks found that an alumnus's email account had sent a large volume of messages and may have been hijacked or misused. The university immediately deactivated the account and launched an investigation.
Taiwan's representative office in Italy said Taiwan condemns all forms of intimidation. Relevant agencies and organizations are willing to cooperate with Italian authorities and provide any necessary technical assistance to clarify the facts.
After the threats were sent, numerous schools across Italy took precautionary measures and evacuated students and staff. Some parents were also notified and went to schools to collect their children. Police and other authorities inspected the campuses but found no explosives.
A Taiwan national living in Rome told the Central News Agency that the high school attended by her daughter had also received an evacuation notice. Students were ordered to leave before they had time to retrieve their mobile phones from their classrooms. Police later arrived to search the school and found no bomb.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said police had found no explosives and that there was no specific security threat. She said the threats appeared intended to cause panic, waste public resources and create social disruption.
Italian police and cybersecurity experts currently suspect that hackers may have breached a Taiwan university's mail server or carried out a relay attack using a spoofed sender address. However, the fact that the emails appeared to come from a Taiwan domain does not mean the actual sender was in Taiwan, nor does it establish that Da-Yeh University or its alumnus was involved in a crime.
Da-Yeh University has deactivated the account in question, but the cause of the incident, the actual source of the emails and the identity of those behind them remain under investigation. Whether authorities and organizations in Taiwan and Italy will conduct a further joint investigation, and whether other affected institutions are identified, will be closely watched.