The Daily Raptor
Friday, June 20, 2025 Edition

Every edition hits you like a baby goat in a tuxedo at a sales interview—you're not sure why it's here, but you can't stop looking.

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Quick Review: Trust Might Be Optional, But Is Reality Collapsing?

Is this fake, or real?

On Tuesday, we explored how Deepfakes are distorting reality and undermining human trust (ICYMI: June 17th Edition). Today, we zoom in on a real-world case where attackers didn’t just fool tools—they fooled entire workflows, people and altered perceived reality for many.

Welcome to the modern breach:
No malware. No exploits. Just a flawless, multi-stage, criminal performance.

The old model—protect, detect, respond—is no longer enough. Scattered Spider, one of today’s most dangerous and effective threat groups, has exposed the weakest link in enterprise security: human trust. Their attacks don’t rely on zero-days or brute force—they exploit confidence, credibility, and context.

If you haven’t heard of Scattered Spider yet, you're already behind. This group is in the headlines now, targeting the largest companies with frightening precision. CISOs and CIOs across industries are either actively tracking them—or unknowingly vulnerable.

This isn’t run-of-the-mill phishing. This is surgical social engineering, powered by stolen customer data, spoofed help desks, and real-time voice deepfakes. It’s not that systems fail—it’s that they work exactly as designed, just for the wrong identity.

How? Through a surprisingly straightforward, multi-stage playbook designed to turn your own workflows into weapons.

This is where the masks come off—and your customers become the mark.

In Stage 1, Scattered Spider infiltrates large enterprises—especially those rich in customer data—using stolen credentials and internal access. But Stage 2 is where the real play begins. Once inside, the attackers don't just encrypt systems and demand ransom. They go deeper, exfiltrating vast amounts of sensitive data—customer PII, phone numbers, employee directories, and account identifiers.

Why? Because the true payday isn’t in paralyzing systems. It’s in targeting people.

Scattered Spider uses this stolen data to profile high-net-worth individuals, identifying those labeled as "high-net-worth" or “funded” inside CRM tags or support tickets. Then, with native English fluency—a rare and critical edge in the cybercriminal world—they craft convincing, real-time social engineering attacks that result in SIM swaps, account takeovers, and crypto theft on a personal scale.

They don’t just steal access.
They weaponize identity.
They execute with terrifying precision.

This stage has proven brutally effective. Over $11 million in crypto drained. Individual losses as high as $1.67 million. The whole operation choreographed via Telegram.

By the time most organizations realize what’s happening, it’s not just a breach—it’s a full-blown financial crime spree.

Stage 2 isn’t just about stolen data.
It’s about hijacking lives.

Scattered Spider didn’t brute-force the hardened perimeter.
They brute-forced relationships.

By compromising a single BPO or vendor, they slipped into trusted workflows with ease—without triggering alarms. They used business-as-usual to deliver business-ending attacks.

When your customer’s frontline support staff becomes the breach point, you don’t have a perimeter anymore.
You have a house of mirrors.

The most disturbing move in their playbook?

They used actual support reps at telecom companies to initiate SIM swaps, bypassing MFA entirely. The agents weren’t sloppy—they were helpful. Trained. Efficient.

Completely unaware they were handing over the keys.

The human layer—specifically, the instinct to help—is now an attack surface.
And it’s undefended.

Firewalls don’t block confidence.
EDR doesn’t scan for charm.
SIEMs can’t alert on intent.

The breach point has shifted—from systems to psychology.

Your customers now rely on third-party vendors, call centers, and human-driven workflows that were never designed to detect impersonation. Those interactions aren’t protected. They’re assumed trustworthy—and that's the breach.

In our last issue, we explored Deepfakes as a growing threat—today, we’re showing you how that illusion is now embedded in everyday enterprise operations. The Deepfake problem isn’t limited to fake videos or cloned voices; it’s the entire system of manipulated trust, hijacked workflows, and identity theater that attackers like Scattered Spider exploit with frightening ease.

The question isn’t if your customer is vulnerable—it’s how many ways they already are.

Think your CIO/CISO’s organization could detect a social engineering attack in progress—would they bet on it?
Hit reply and tell me. I read every single one.

—The DR Team
/smb

PS: Ivy claims she once caught a raccoon impersonating her in a Zoom call. Jury’s still out.