A group of young cybercriminals poses the ‘most imminent threat’ of cyberattacks right now

Empty grocery store shelves and grounded planes tend to signal a crisis, whether it’s an extreme weather event, public health crisis, or geopolitical emergency. But these scenes of chaos in recent weeks in the United Kingdom, United States and Canada were caused instead by financially motivated cyberattacks — seemingly perpetrated by a collective of joyriding teens.

A notorious cybercriminal group often called Scattered Spider is known for using social engineering techniques to infiltrate target companies by tricking IT help desk workers into granting them system access.

Researchers say that the group seems to gain expertise about the backend systems commonly used by businesses in a particular industry and then uses this knowledge to hit a cluster of targets before moving on to another sector. The group often deploys ransomware or conducts data extortion attacks once it has compromised its victims.

Read more at Wired