A 23-year-old Scottish man considered a member of the prolific Scattered Spider cybercrime group was extradited final week from Spain to the USA, the place he’s dealing with fees of wire fraud, conspiracy and id theft. U.S. prosecutors allege Tyler Robert Buchanan and co-conspirators hacked into dozens of firms in the USA and overseas, and that he personally managed greater than $26 million stolen from victims.
Scattered Spider is a loosely affiliated prison hacking group whose members have damaged into and stolen information from a few of the world’s largest know-how firms. Buchanan was arrested in Spain final yr on a warrant from the FBI, which wished him in reference to a collection of SMS-based phishing assaults in the summertime of 2022 that led to intrusions at Twilio, LastPass, DoorDash, Mailchimp, and lots of different tech corporations.
Tyler Buchanan, being escorted by Spanish police on the airport in Palma de Mallorca in June 2024.
As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity, Buchanan (a.ok.a. “tylerb”) fled the UK in February 2023, after a rival cybercrime gang employed thugs to invade his dwelling, assault his mom, and threaten to burn him with a blowtorch until he gave up the keys to his cryptocurrency pockets. Buchanan was arrested in June 2024 on the airport in Palma de Mallorca whereas attempting to board a flight to Italy. His extradition to the USA was first reported final week by Bloomberg.
Members of Scattered Spider have been tied to the 2023 ransomware assaults towards MGM and Caesars casinos in Las Vegas, nevertheless it stays unclear whether or not Buchanan was implicated in that incident. The Justice Division’s grievance towards Buchanan makes no point out of the 2023 ransomware assault.
Fairly, the investigation into Buchanan seems to middle on the SMS phishing campaigns from 2022, and on SIM-swapping assaults that siphoned funds from particular person cryptocurrency traders. In a SIM-swapping assault, crooks switch the goal’s telephone quantity to a tool they management and intercept any textual content messages or telephone calls to the sufferer’s machine — together with one-time passcodes for authentication and password reset hyperlinks despatched through SMS.
In August 2022, KrebsOnSecurity reviewed information harvested in a months-long cybercrime marketing campaign by Scattered Spider involving numerous SMS-based phishing assaults towards workers at main companies. The safety agency Group-IB referred to as them by a unique identify — 0ktapus, as a result of the group usually spoofed the id supplier Okta of their phishing messages to workers at focused corporations.
A Scattered Spider/0Ktapus SMS phishing lure despatched to Twilio workers in 2022.
The grievance towards Buchanan (PDF) says the FBI tied him to the 2022 SMS phishing assaults after discovering the identical username and e-mail handle was used to register quite a few Okta-themed phishing domains seen within the marketing campaign. The area registrar NameCheap discovered that lower than a month earlier than the phishing spree, the account that registered these domains logged in from an Web handle within the U.Okay. FBI investigators stated the Scottish police advised them the handle was leased to Buchanan from January 26, 2022 to November 7, 2022.
Authorities seized at the very least 20 digital units once they raided Buchanan’s residence, and on a kind of units they discovered usernames and passwords for workers of three totally different firms focused within the phishing marketing campaign.
“The FBI’s investigation so far has gathered proof exhibiting that Buchanan and his co-conspirators focused at the very least 45 firms in the USA and overseas, together with Canada, India, and the UK,” the FBI grievance reads. “One in every of Buchanan’s units contained a screenshot of Telegram messages between an account identified for use by Buchanan and different unidentified co-conspirators discussing dividing up the proceeds of SIM swapping.”
U.S. prosecutors allege that information obtained from Discord confirmed the identical U.Okay. Web handle was used to function a Discord account that specified a cryptocurrency pockets when asking one other consumer to ship funds. The grievance says the publicly obtainable transaction historical past for that cost handle reveals roughly 391 bitcoin was transferred out and in of this handle between October 2022 and
February 2023; 391 bitcoin is presently price greater than $26 million.
In November 2024, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles unsealed prison fees towards Buchanan and 4 different alleged Scattered Spider members, together with Ahmed Elbadawy, 23, of School Station, Texas; Joel Evans, 25, of Jacksonville, North Carolina; Evans Osiebo, 20, of Dallas; and Noah City, 20, of Palm Coast, Florida. KrebsOnSecurity reported final yr that one other suspected Scattered Spider member — a 17-year-old from the UK — was arrested as a part of a joint investigation with the FBI into the MGM hack.
Mr. Buchanan’s court-appointed legal professional didn’t reply to a request for remark. The accused faces fees of wire fraud conspiracy, conspiracy to acquire data by laptop for personal monetary acquire, and aggravated id theft. Convictions on the latter cost carry a minimal sentence of two years in jail.
Paperwork from the U.S. District Court docket for the Central District of California point out Buchanan is being held with out bail pending trial. A preliminary listening to within the case is slated for Could 6.
