Crime

Short Month Has No Shortage of Strange Security Stories

By Scott Briscoe

28 February 2025

Today in Security is a daily undertaking to present news that is important to the security sector—news stories that security directors need to be aware of or that can be instructive to corporate security in some way. And then once a month, we present the stories that caught our editors’ eyes not because they have deep insight into security, but rather because the stories are just strange. From February we found strange stories highlighting vulnerabilities, unsolved crimes, and proverbial mountain-from-a-molehill story.

Disclaimer: While these stories are presented with a lighter touch, we understand security is a serious function and we do not wish to diminish any pain or suffering highlighted in these stories.

Number 5 Vulnerability One: Monkey Brings Island to Its Knees: The island nation of Sri Lanka went completely dark. Was it an earthquake? No. A cyberattack on critical infrastructure? No. A precursor to Chinese or Indian invasion? No. It was the work of a single culprit. “A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer, causing an imbalance in the system,” said Kumara Jayakody, the country’s energy minister. No word on the health of the monkey, but it’s probably not good.

Number 4 Vulnerability Two: The Superman Drone Goes Splat: The war in Ukraine has highlighted how easy it is to mount significant ordinance on commercial drones. Greenpeace activists wanted to show how vulnerable a nuclear power station was, so they attached a Superman dummy to a drone and crashed it into one of the power plants buildings, filming the incident.

Number 3 Unsolved Crime One: The 500-Pound Scottish Terrier Heist: A community in Washington, D.C., wanted to honor a long-time preschool teacher who had served the community for nearly 40 years, and so they commissioned artwork in her honor. The concept chosen was a 500-pound bronze of a Scottie dog, chosen because the teacher had used a statue of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's terrier in her lessons for years. The sculpture, which had been installed at a dog park, was likely sold or melted for scrap, and police have no leads. (For more strange security news involving Scottish animals, read the account of the hairy Scottish Highland bull running amok in Connecticut.)

Number 2 Unsolved Crime Two: Case of 100,000 Stolen Eggs Is Hard to Crack: Apologies for the groan-inducing headline, but it’s pulled from the source material. Eggs have become a hot commodity with the supply affected by bird flu and other supply chain issues, so when a trailer filled with approximately 100,000 of the precious eggs goes missing in rural Pennsylvania, it’s a big story.

Number 1 It's the Principle (and the Principal), Because It’s Certainly Not the $25: It’s been more than a year, but the scandal is so acute that The Wall Street Journal still wrote nearly 1,500 words about it this week. At the heart of this sprawling story is a $25 Target gift card that went missing from the pre-K through sixth grade school mailroom in the small hamlet of Amagansett on New York’s Long Island. The case features 1,400 pages of testimony, nearly $25,000 in arbitration fees, and recordings from 38 surveillance cameras at the school. And in the end, the question remains: did the school’s principal Maria Dorr swipe the $25 gift card?