Scattered Spider

Overview

Scattered Spider is a native English-speaking cybercriminal group active since at least 2022. The group initially targeted customer relationship management (CRM) providers, business process outsourcing (BPO) firms, and telecommunications and technology companies before expanding in 2023 to gaming, hospitality, retail, managed service provider (MSP), manufacturing, and financial sectors. Scattered Spider relies heavily on social engineering, including impersonating IT and help-desk staff, to gain initial access, bypass multi-factor authentication (MFA), and compromise enterprise networks. The group has adapted its tooling to evade endpoint detection and response (EDR) defenses and used ransomware for financial gain. Scattered Spider had expanded into hybrid cloud and identity environments, using help-desk impersonation and MFA bypass to obtain administrator access in Okta, AWS, and Office 365.

Capabilities

• Custom malware/implant development — ATT&CK: 3 attributed custom malware families

TTPs — 64 techniques across 14 tactics

Tools & malware (9)

WarzoneRAT · Rclone · LaZagne · Tor · Mimikatz · Raccoon Stealer · ngrok · BlackCat · ConnectWise

Reporting (3)

• From Help Desk to Hypervisor: Defending Your VMware vSphere Estate from UNC3944 — Mandiant Incident Response
• Defending Against UNC3944: Cybercrime Hardening Guidance from the Frontlines — Mandiant Incident Response
• Cybersecurity Advisory: Scattered Spider (AA23-320A) — CISA