Translated automatically by AI from the Italian original.
ROME / NEWS & SCHOOLS – A cut-and-paste email sent to thousands of addresses will no longer be enough to empty a school. The Interior Minister, Matteo Piantedosi, has set this out in black and white in a circular sent to prefects and police chiefs after days of false bomb threats that reached almost 3,800 schools across Italy.
In the directive, the Viminale states that a threat must be considered “unreliable if it is clearly serial in nature”, meaning it consists of “identical or substantially similar messages from the same source and sent indiscriminately to a large number of recipients”.
Exceptions to the rule and the role of the Situation Centre
The new protocol aims to ensure, where security conditions allow, “the regularity of school and essential activities and services”. However, prefects and police chiefs will be required to immediately reassess the risk level if objective evidence emerges:
- Concrete circumstances: the discovery of suspicious objects, anomalies recorded by surveillance systems linked to the threat, or previous reports and similar incidents targeting the same location.
- Targeted checks and evacuation as a last resort: if concrete evidence is present, the police chief will order checks and protection measures, seeking to avoid interrupting activities “where not indispensable”, and will propose evacuation to the prefect “only if deemed necessary”.
- National coordination: the Situation Centre of the Public Security Department, operational 24/7, will collect all reports from local offices to share useful elements for assessing their actual reliability.
Media caution and the line set at Palazzo Chigi
In the circular, Piantedosi also calls for caution in public communication, warning that the “uncontrolled spread of news” about the threats risks amplifying the alarm and fostering an unjustified sense of insecurity among citizens. The document also clarifies that such messages do not constitute cyberattacks and do not change the procedures for cyber incidents, which remain the responsibility of the Postal Police, the National Cybersecurity Agency and the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate.
The provisions translate the operational line already outlined by the Committee for the Security of the Republic, which met with the deputy minister Alfredo Mantovano and the ministers Giuseppe Valditara and Matteo Piantedosi. After Palazzo Chigi urged school heads not to order evacuations without real evidence, of the roughly 3,800 schools targeted by the latest wave of emails — signed by the self-styled Mikhail Andropov — only 77 had evacuated students, with 36 schools resuming lessons shortly afterwards.
Investigations into foreign servers and subversive theories
Meanwhile, the judiciary continues its work. Prosecutors from Rome’s Anti-Terrorism unit are investigating unknown suspects for threats and causing public alarm, tracing the transit servers of the communications and initiating an exchange of information with investigators from other European countries. The case may be merged with the one opened for recent threats at Fiumicino airport, while the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Milan is proceeding for causing public alarm and public intimidation.
Under scrutiny by intelligence and the Postal Police is also the technical evolution of the offensive: while on Wednesday the messages were sent from the hacked account of a Taiwanese student, the following day multiple compromised addresses were used, some linked to the Philippines. Investigators are verifying whether the same group behind the campaign is connected to the threats that in recent days have forced several European flights to make emergency landings escorted by military jets.
