Cyber
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Federal authorities unsealed charges Wednesday against five individuals with links to the “Scattered Spider” cybercrime syndicate, accusing them of conducting an extensive phishing scheme that compromised companies nationwide, enabling the theft of non-public data and millions in cryptocurrency. 

Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 23, of Texas; Noah Michael Urban, 20, of Florida; Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 20, of Texas; and Joel Martin Evans, 25, of North Carolina, have been charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, for allegedly sending phishing messages to various technical employees to capture login credentials, which were then illicitly used to access and exploit corporate and individual accounts. 

A separate complaint was filed against Tyler Robert Buchanan, 22, from the United Kingdom, for similar crimes.

Evans was arrested Tuesday by the FBI in North Carolina and is expected to make his initial court appearance Wednesday. Urban was arrested in January in Florida after being indicted on separate federal wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges. Buchanan was arrested in June by Spanish police for being “responsible for the computer attack on 45 companies in the United States.”  

“The defendants allegedly preyed on unsuspecting victims in this phishing scheme and used their personal information as a gateway to steal millions in their cryptocurrency accounts,” said Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. “These types of fraudulent solicitations are ubiquitous and rob American victims of their hard-earned money with the click of a mouse.”

Scattered Spider emanates from an online community known as “the Com,” an aggressive, nebulous ring of approximately 1,000 young cybercriminals that are mainly organized on online platforms. The group, also tracked by cybersecurity firms as “0ktapus,” Octo Tempest, or UNC3944, has been known to target big-name companies, including the casino giant MGM Resorts and Clorox.

Court documents reveal that between September 2021 and April 2023, the defendants disseminated mass SMS phishing messages to employees of various target companies. These messages deceptively indicated account deactivation warnings, directing users to phishing sites mirroring genuine business service providers. When employees entered their credentials, these were harvested to gain unauthorized access to corporate systems, resulting in the theft of intellectual property and personal identifiers. The group also used stolen information to break into many cryptocurrency accounts and steal millions of dollars.

The FBI had faced criticism for limited progress in bringing members of the Com to justice. However, law enforcement actions targeting Scattered Spider and the wider Com network have been frequently occurring over the past few months. 

Aside from the arrests mentioned above, British police arrested a 17-year-old who is believed to be behind last year’s ransomware attack on MGM Resorts. Earlier this month, Canadian authorities arrested Alexander “Connor” Moucka, an alleged Com member suspected of orchestrating a series of data exfiltration attacks targeting customers of the data storage firm Snowflake. 

The post  US charges five men linked to ‘Scattered Spider’ with wire fraud appeared first on CyberScoop.

A top senator on Tuesday urged the Federal Communications Commission to begin writing rules that would create mandatory security standards for wiretapping systems embedded in the networks of telecommunications carriers.

The suggestion to act immediately from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., comes in response to Chinese hackers known as Salt Typhoon, targeting the phones of both 2024 presidential campaigns via the so-called “lawful access” program, which mandates that telecoms assist the U.S. government in its surveillance efforts. The hacking campaign has spurred considerable congressional interest.

It also comes after the election of Donald Trump for president and as his administration prepares to take over in January. But at a hearing of his Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law, Blumenthal said the issue is bipartisan and any rulemaking should continue into next year.

“Think of it for a moment: A foreign adversary attempted to wiretap both presidential campaigns during this past election,” he said at the hearing. “We’re still learning each week about how sprawling and catastrophic this hacking campaign was. What we know now, and it’s publicly known, should galvanize action now. We need to ensure that these specific types of hacks will never happen again.”

Adam Meyers, senior vice president of the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, said hackers who infiltrate the lawful access program could collect call times, call contents, text message traffic, where a call is coming from and whom a target is with — opening up the ability to then target those additional parties.

“The lawful intercept rules that are present for lawful purposes, if there’s a warrant or other means for law enforcement to collect information, is a gold mine for a foreign threat actor,” he told Blumenthal’s panel.

The FCC should also launch an investigation, Blumenthal said. The commission reportedly requested a briefing from national security officials on the Salt Typhoon intrusions, but a spokesperson declined to comment last week on whether it received that briefing.

“The FCC has the legal authority, right now it has the power, to set and enforce security standards,” Blumenthal said.

Blumethal’s urging is an echo of other calls last month for the FCC to take up those security standards. The extent to which the Trump administration will embrace minimum critical infrastructure security standards, though, is unclear.

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