US prosecutors unsealed criminal charges on Wednesday against five suspected members of Scattered Spider, an affiliated hacker community suspected of breaking into dozens of US companies to steal confidential information and cryptocurrencies.
Martin Estrada, the U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, said the defendants conducted phishing attacks by sending mass fake but real-looking text messages to employees’ cellphones warning that their accounts would be deactivated.
The hackers, in their teens or 20s at the time, allegedly directed employees to the link to enter login information, enabling the hackers to steal from their employers and millions of dollars in cryptocurrency from the individuals’ accounts.
The victims allegedly included at least 12 companies in the gaming, contracting, telecommunications and cryptocurrency fields, plus hundreds of thousands of individuals.
Estrada’s office confirmed that the case involved the dispersed Spider. No victims were identified by name.
Security experts and officials have said that the Scattered Spider is made up of small groups of people, including youths, who occasionally collaborate on specific jobs.
The group has been blamed for extremely aggressive cybercrime sprees, targeting large multinational companies as well as individual cryptocurrency investors.
Some experts previously complained about the apparent inability of law enforcement to crack down even though the identities of some suspects, including some who lived in Western countries, were known, industry insiders told Reuters last year.
This may now change.
“The days of easy money and no consequences are over,” said Allison Nixon, chief research officer at cybersecurity firm Unit 221B. “Defenders and law enforcement are tackling this wave of cybercrime aggressively right now. Young people who have fallen into the culture of online crime must be removed before they become the next target.”
The defendants are Tyler Buchanan, 22, of Scotland; Ahmed Elbadawy, 23, of College Station, Texas; Joel Evans, 25, of Jacksonville, North Carolina; Evans Osiebo, 20, of Dallas; and Noah Urban, 20, of Palm Coast, Florida.
Each was charged with two counts of conspiracy and aggravated identity theft, and Buchanan was also charged with wire fraud.
Investigators traced Buchanan through domain registration records for phishing websites registered under an account whose username included the name of the late actor Bob Saget.
Officials said the suspects’ illegal activity spanned from September 2021 to April 2023.
Scattered Spider gained particular notoriety in September 2023 when members of its community hacked and shut down the networks of casino operators Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts International and demanded large ransom payments. Caesars paid about $15 million to restore its network.
It was unclear whether these five defendants were connected to the Scattered Spider casino hacks.
The Justice Department declined to comment on specific victims. Caesars did not immediately return requests for comment. MGM said the defendants did not appear to be connected to the cyber attack against its network.
Evans was arrested Tuesday in North Carolina. Urban has pleaded not guilty to 14 counts of fraud and conspiracy in a separate case in Florida.
Buchanan was arrested in June at an airport in Palma de Mallorca, Spain as he tried to board a flight to Naples, Spanish authorities said at the time. He is awaiting extradition from Spain, a Justice Department spokesman said.
A public defender representing Urban did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Attorneys for the other defendants could not be immediately identified.
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