- Category
- Targeted, sponsor unknown · Targeted intrusions with no sponsor attributed.
- Origin
- Unknown
- Motivation
- Financial gain; Information theft and espionage
- Seen
- 2022–2026
- Status
- Active
- ATT&CK
- G1015 · 66 techniques
- Sources
- 13 sources carry it
- Identifier
- GINC-APT-0019 · scattered-spider
What it is
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.
Names
The names each vendor, agency and source gives it. Naming differs by who tracks the actor, so one group carries many.
- Mandiant
- UNC3944
- Microsoft
- Octo Tempest, DEV-0875, DEV-0971, Storm-0875, Storm-0971
- MITRE ATT&CK
- G1015
- Other names
- Muddled Libra, 0ktapus, LUCR-3, Octo Tempest (Microsoft), Oktapus, Roasted 0ktapus, Scatter Swine, Scattered Spider (CrowdStrike), Scattered Swine, Star Fraud, Starfraud
Targets
- Sectors
- IT, Technology, Telecommunications
Tools
The tools and malware families the sources tie to it.
- ADRecon
- AnyDesk
- BlackCat
- ConnectWise
- DCSync
- FiveTran
- FleetDeck
- Govmomi
- Hacking Team UEFI Rootkit
- Hekatomb
- Impacket
- LaZagne
- Linpeas
- Living off the Land
- LummaC2
- Mimikatz
- Ngrok
- PingCastle
- ProcDump
- PsExec
- Pulseway
- Pure Storage FlashArray
- Raccoon Stealer
- Rclone
- RedLine
- Rsocx
- RustDesk
- ScreenConnect
- SharpHound
- Socat
- Spidey Bot
- Splashtop
- Stealc
- TacticalRMM
- Tailscale
- TightVNC
- Tor
- VIDAR
- Vidar
- WarzoneRAT
- WinRAR
- WsTunnel
- gosecretsdump
- ngrok
Sources
- MITRE ATT&CK attack.mitre.org
- ETDA Threat Group Card apt.etda.or.th
- Malpedia malpedia.caad.fkie.fraunhofer.de