Threatening Combat 18 email floods the net

A particularly harrowing email, purporting to be from the fascist organisation Combat 18 has been widely circulating the internet this morning. Spoofing the email addresses of many major local authorities, respected UK organisations and public bodies, the email threatens the recipient with violence unless the web site for anti-fascist Searchlight Magazine is removed from the web.

The email message, which has the title:  <Recipients Name> We know where you live the rest we are locating  Searchlightmagazine.com, carries the following message.

WARNING

Pull the plug on   Searchlightmagazine.com   from your servers within the next 24 hrs.

We suggest you visit  192.com to understand how easy it was to locate your address. We are going to visit your homes very shortly.

The time of our visits will be dictated by Combat 18 who have in the past, had members put into prison for Nail bombs, IRA type Beatings on women with base ball bats and burning homes down with people in them.

The Police will inform you of our tactics when you inform them of this contact.

24 hrs starts now.

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Netintelligence, the web based internet security company, noticed the first email at 09.40 am this morning and has since caught in its MailFilter system, 1000s of copies of it. Amongst the organisations that have had their email addresses spoofed are:

Birmingham City Council, Burley Council, The Metropolitan Police, Trinity Mirror Group, Lancashire Police Force, Commission for Racial Equality, The UK Parliament, Dudley Council, West Midlands Police, Lewisham Council & Luton Council amongst others.

Netintelligence has evidence of more than 175 organisations having supposedly sent this email. Investigation has shown that the top 5 originating IP addresses for the emails appear to have been delivered via a network of compromised machines / botnet previously used by spammers.

There appears to be two versions of the email circulating. One requests the removal of the Searchlight Magazine web site, whilst an earlier version requested the removal of the Searchlight web site which is actually a recruitment consultancy agency for the entertainment industry 

Recipients of the email are strongly advised to delete the email and not respond.