Doxing is defined as the publishing of identifying information with malicious intent.
Last week “threats” were made against 5 Denver area colleges. The colleges (Arapahoe Community, Community of Aurora and Denver, Front Range Community and Red Rocks Community) either closed their campuses and forced people to leave the campus or went into lockdown.
Even though no direct threat was made to the University of Colorado in Boulder, almost 30 miles away, they closed their campus too.
The cause of the shutdown was a handful of emails that were sent to several individuals at these colleges.
The doxing part was that the emails said that they were this person and they were going to do something. I assume something bad. The police are not releasing the details yet.
The result was shutting down the campuses of 6 colleges and disrupting the lives of tens of thousands of students.
While the police figured out that the emails were hoaxes, that didn’t happen until after the campuses were shut down and the lives of tens of thousands were disrupted.
Not to mention, thousands of dollars and hours wasted by the police.
And all it took was for the hacker to send a few emails.
The good news is that no one was hurt. Earlier in the doxing timeline, people were hurt and even killed by police who rushed in assuming the emails or phone calls were legitimate.
The police cannot ignore these threats. What if one is real?
But somehow they have to figure out how to respond. That is not easy.
In the meantime, people with a grudge can cause a major disruption.
Credit: 9News Denver
