WASHINGTON _ A bomb threat hoax that mobilized police departments across the country last month took advantage of an obscure security weakness at web hosting and domain registry services such as GoDaddy.com, researchers say.
The weakness allowed spammers to obscure the origins of thousands of extortion emails they sent out as part of the hoax campaign, said Ronald F. Guilmette, a veteran spam researcher based near Sacramento, Calif.
GoDaddy acknowledged in a statement sent to McClatchy that hackers had "abused" its service, and said employees had "identified a fix and are taking corrective action immediately."
