Scattered Spider

THREAT ACTOR PROFILE

Scattered Spider

Scattered Spider is a financially motivated cybercrime group of young English-speaking members from the US and UK, active since 2022. It gets in by talking IT help desks into resetting passwords and MFA, then steals data and has worked with ransomware operations including BlackCat/ALPHV, RansomHub and DragonForce.

United States / United Kingdom

Cybercrime

First seen

2022

Latest IOC

IP indicators

Hosts

SHA256 hashes

Posts

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Names and aliases

Group profile

Attack lifecycle

Malware and tooling

IOCs

Notable campaigns

NAMES AND ALIASES

Ten names for one help-desk social engineering crew

Palo Alto Networks reports on this group as Muddled Libra and Mandiant as UNC3944, so the 2026 Unit 42 playbook in our feed never says "Scattered Spider" in its title. Group-IB's 0ktapus name refers to the Okta-themed phishing the crew is known for.

We map every name below to one entry in the threat actors we monitor, so a Muddled Libra playbook and a 0ktapus domain list can be read together.

GROUP PROFILE

English-speaking crew that phones the help desk

Scattered Spider doesn't need exploits to get in. Its members call help desks, impersonate employees and talk staff into resetting credentials or MFA, then move fast into cloud and virtualization platforms.

Our record links the group to the 2023 attacks on Caesars and MGM Resorts and to a later shift to RansomHub after ALPHV collapsed. Reporting from 2025 ties it to attacks on UK retailers and airlines and to DragonForce ransomware.

Members were arrested in the US, UK and Spain in 2024, and a 2026 court filing showed how a Windows device identifier helped the FBI trace another suspect.

Facts:

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Initial Access

Russian Federation · GRU

Victims reported in our records and posts:

ATTACK LIFECYCLE

Vishing an MFA reset, then straight to vSphere

The stages below come from Scattered Spider intrusions documented in posts we track on our IOC Hunter feed, from 2025 into 2026.

Initial Access

Spear-phishing remains the front door. In the 2026 campaign Hunt.io tracked as Operation Neusploit, APT28 sent convincing spear-phishing from already-compromised government accounts and abused a Microsoft Office security bypass (CVE-2026-21509) to kick off a fileless chain. A separate June 2026 cluster delivered the LameHug malware through spear-phishing ZIP archives using double-extension lures.

Initial Access

MALWARE AND TOOLING

Mostly legitimate admin tools, plus phishing kits

Initial Access

CVES EXPLOITED

An Intel driver and a ForgeRock bug

CVE-2026-21509

A Microsoft Office security bypass used to open the fileless chain in Operation Neusploit, and again in the PixyNetLoader intrusion chain. Both campaigns paired the exploit with spear-phishing from compromised accounts rather than mass exploitation.

CVE-2026-21509

Scattered Spider

IOCS FROM HUNT.IO PLATFORM

Latest IOCs

We currently track - IP indicators, - hosts, and - SHA256 hashes for Akira across - intelligence posts, with the most recent indicator dated -. The sample below is limited to indicators from the latest posts. It is not the full set.

Showing a sample of recent indicators

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Scattered Spider

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

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Showing a sample of recent indicators

Get the complete

Scattered Spider

IOC set, full IP, host and hash history.

Unlock all the IOCs for Free

NOTABLE CAMPAIGNS

Rogue VMs, retail extortion and a GDID arrest

Recent reporting shows the same playbook, phone the help desk and go after virtualization and cloud data, while law enforcement keeps closing in on individual members.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.

PixyNetLoader tracking

A clustering of roughly 90 loader samples across four sub-families from 2024 to 2026, with steganography and cloud C2, also linking to related APT28 tooling such as SlimAgent and Graphite.