Authorities reportedly arrested the suspected ringleader of Scattered Spider, a hacking collective blamed for a series of high-profile incidents, in Spain.
Murcia Today, a Spanish newspaper, reported that authorities detained the 22-year-old British man at Palma Airport as he was preparing to board a flight to Italy. This is a part of a joint operation between the Spanish police and the FBI.
The Spanish authorities have not officially revealed the man’s name. Authorities in the United States have not unsealed any charging documents either.
Scattered Spider has posed a unique challenge for law enforcement. Its structure resembles more of a collective rather than the typical style of financially motivated threat groups, such as cybercrime organizations based in Russia.
The director of threat intelligence at Secureworks Counter Threat Unit, Rafe Pilling said that law enforcement has made another major move with this arrest. There’s still a long way to go but the blows keep coming for the cyber criminal gangs right now.
Authorities blamed the hackers for conducting a cyberattack on MGM Resorts, a casino giant, back in 2023. MGM Resorts operates a lot of properties in Las Vegas. This includes Mandalay Bay, the Bellagio, the Cosmopolitan, and the Aria.
The attack shut off everything from slot machines to restaurant management systems, and even key cards for rooms for days. The company informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that the attack cost them $100 million.
The hackers infamously deployed social engineering in order to have access to their target networks. This includes SIM swapping as well as sending SMS phishing texts. It is a technique that apparently helped the collective access the computer networks of Coinbase, Twilio, Mailchimp, and LastPass.
It follows Noah Urban, aged 19, another suspected hacker affiliated with the group. Authorities arrested him in Florida last January.
