Cybersecurity Sales Teams: Twice a week, our researchers pursue threats on the dark web, while eating chardboard-ish granola & drinking expired RedBull. You’ve only seen a ‘Q3 push’ from leadership. Only one of us needed therapy. Plus, you eat a lot better.
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The Daily Raptor
Tuesday, July 1st 2025 Edition
Scattered Spider
The Threat Campaign That’s Pervasive—And Alarmingly Effective—at Evading Enterprise Security
New Developments Over the Weekend
The FBI has issued a fresh warning: Scattered Spider has now set its sights on the aviation sector, with confirmed incidents at Hawaiian Airlines and WestJet. The group’s methods are familiar—voice phishing to impersonate employees, deceive IT help desks, and bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA).
These attacks confirm what security leaders dread: Scattered Spider isn’t just persistent—it’s opportunistic, agile, and able to pivot between sectors in real time.
No industry is immune. Sector-wide pivots are now part of the modern threat model.
Scattered Spider - The Organization
Immediate Business Impact
Scattered Spider is currently among the most dangerous cybercriminal groups targeting enterprise organizations:
Social engineering mastery is their edge—impersonating employees and IT staff to trick help desks into resetting passwords and MFA.
Despite their impact, they’re not nation-state actors—most members are teenagers and young adults from the US and UK, using psychological manipulation and off-the-shelf tools to paralyze Fortune 500 companies.
Why This Matters to Your Customers
If your customers have a help desk, cloud infrastructure, or customer service team, they’re at risk.
Scattered Spider avoids zero-day exploits.
They use legitimate tools like TeamViewer and Microsoft Remote Desktop to move laterally.
Their recent shift from credential theft to ransomware has unlocked multiple revenue streams: encryption, data extortion, or both.
Collaboration with Russian ransomware groups like BlackCat gives them enterprise-grade capabilities.
Their native English fluency makes social engineering even harder to detect.
Critical Defense Strategies
Security leaders should act immediately. Priorities include:
Implement phishing-resistant MFA (e.g., hardware security keys)
Tighten help desk authentication workflows
Train staff on voice phishing (“vishing”) scenarios
Monitor for identity provider changes
Enforce strict conditional access policies
Deploy EDR tools that flag legitimate software misuse
Use out-of-band communication during incidents
Maintain offline, immutable backups
Equip help desk staff to spot attacker behavior (e.g., urgency to reset credentials, failure to answer verification questions)
Run Red Team exercises targeting help desk and identity infrastructure
Executive Recommendations
Despite multiple arrests—including their alleged leader—Scattered Spider remains highly active. Their success has inspired copycats, evolving this into a sustained threat model.
CISOs should assume they will be targeted and act accordingly:
Invest in zero-trust architectures
Roll out hardware tokens
Deploy cloud-native monitoring
Schedule frequent Red Team and attack simulation exercises
This East-meets-West convergence—Western social engineering meets Eastern European ransomware—is reshaping cybercrime.
Cybersecurity is no longer an IT issue. It’s a board-level business continuity priority.
One Phone Call. One Reset. Millions in Losses.
Top Scattered Spider Coverage – July 1st, 2025
Scattered Spider Expands Attacks to Aviation and Transportation Sectors – axios.com
FBI Issues Alert on Scattered Spider's Targeting of US Airlines – thehill.com
Scattered Spider Intensifies Focus on Insurance Industry – wsj.com
Tech Firms Warn of Scattered Spider's Aviation Sector Attacks – reuters.com
FBI Highlights Scattered Spider's Expanding Airline Attacks – thehackernews.com
Scattered Spider's Crime Spree Hits Aviation – darkreading.com
Inside Scattered Spider: The Notorious Teen Hacking Group Causing Chaos Online – the-independent.com
Hawaiian Airlines Targeted as Industry Warned of Scattered Spider – securityweek.com
Scattered Spider & DragonForce Join Forces in M&S Hack – thetimes.co.uk
Did someone say “Sandwich?”
Have a great week, Raptor Community!
Stay sharp. Stay safe.
The DR Team
/smb