Alleged Scattered Spider hacker surrenders to US police

Alleged Scattered Spider hacker surrenders to US police

Another alleged affiliate of the high-profile Scattered Spider network of cybercriminals has surrendered himself to police in Las Vegas.



The unnamed male teenager faces criminal charges of obtaining personally indentifiable information to harm or impersonate, extortion and unlawful computer use, the Las Vegas Police Department said.

He will face the alleged charges as an adult, the US prosecutors said.

The apprehended teenager is alleged to be a member of the dispersed Scattered Spider organisation, which also goes under the names of Octo Tempest, UNC3944 and Oktapus.

He is alleged to have taken part in what the police say were sophisticated network intrusions of multiple Las Vegas casinos, which were probed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Cyber Task Force in the city.

UNC3944 or Scattered Spider is said to have struck MGM Resorts International and Caesar’s casinos with ransomware.

Last week, Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA) said it had charged 19-year-old Thalha Jubair of East London, and 18-year-old Owen Flowers from West Midlands for their alleged network intrusion of the Transport for London agency.

NCA said it believed the attack was carried out by members of the online criminal collective Scattered Spider as well.

Flowers has also been charged with conspiring with others to infiltrate and damage the networks of two US health organisations, and both men have been remanded in custody.

Scattered Spider has been linked to The Com (Community) of young cybercriminals who connect with each other online using social media and gaming platforms.

The Com is reputed to be violent, targeting childern, and very abusive.

The group has also been linked to ShinyHunters, which in recent months has attacked a large number of well-known enterprises, through the Salesloft Drift Salesforce integration, using social engineering techniques such as voice phishing (vishing).


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Security researcher and threat analyst with expertise in malware analysis and incident response.