The FBI has issued a public warning to airline travelers about a sophisticated cybercriminal group called Scattered Spider, the hacker group responsible for a series of cyberattacks against major companies and government agencies in the United States.
Knewz.com has learned that, according to Google’s Mandiant division, the hacker group excels at “persistence, lateral movement, and rapid escalation.”
FBI Issues Warning About Scattered Spider
The FBI issued the alert publicly and with urgency on X. “The FBI has recently observed the cybercriminal group Scattered Spider expanding its targeting to include the airline sector… The FBI is actively working with aviation and industry partners to address this activity and assist victims,” the alert read.
According to the FBI’s statement, the cybercriminal group employs sophisticated social engineering tactics, frequently impersonating company employees or contractors to manipulate IT help desks into granting unauthorized access, which they often use to circumvent multi-factor authentication (MFA) protocols.
“They target large corporations and their third-party IT providers, which means anyone in the airline ecosystem, including trusted vendors and contractors, could be at risk,” the alert reads.
The Hacker Group Steals Sensitive Info and Deploys Ransomware
Once they manage to infiltrate the systems, Scattered Spider steals sensitive information and deploys ransomware across critical systems.
According to Mandiant CTO Charles Carmakal, “They can detonate ransomware within hours of breach.”
It has been reported that the hacker group is already responsible for crippling MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment. Reports have further mentioned that the cybercriminal group monitors communication tools, including Slack, Microsoft Teams, and email platforms to detect any signs that their activity has been discovered.
The FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said in a joint alert from November 2024, “They frequently join incident remediation and response calls and teleconferences, likely to identify how security teams are hunting them and proactively develop new avenues of intrusion.”
Series of Cyberattacks Targeting Aviation
The alert from the FBI came as several airlines reported a series of cyberattacks over the past few months. On June 13, Canada’s WestJet reported a cybersecurity incident involving its internal systems and its mobile app, “which has restricted access for several users.”
On June 26, Hawaiian Airlines said it was “addressing a cybersecurity event that has affected some of our IT systems.” Still, it provided no details about the incident or what kind of data had been accessed. On July 2, Qantas announced that it suffered a similar incident when “a cyber criminal targeted a call centre and gained access to a third-party customer servicing platform.”
FBI Warns Against Coordinated Campaigns Targeting Aviation Infrastructure
The FBI is signaling a growing shift in cyber threats, warning that recent incidents point to a move beyond isolated data breaches toward coordinated efforts targeting critical aviation infrastructure. The hacking group Scattered Spider may represent only the early stages of this trend. National security experts caution that foreign adversaries, including China, Iran, Russia and North Korea, are closely monitoring these developments. These nation-state actors are believed to be studying the tactics used, learning from them, and potentially preparing their own cyber campaigns aimed at U.S. aviation systems, according to reports.
Officials are also raising concerns about non-state actors. Extremist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS continue to regard aviation as a powerful strategic and symbolic target. Analysts warn that the growing number of digital vulnerabilities in aviation networks now presents these groups with new opportunities to launch cyber-based attacks.
As former White House cyber advisor Tom Kellermann warned, “The cyber 9/11 is coming.”
Cybersecurity strategist Theresa Payton also commented on the matter, saying, “The future of warfare will be about disrupting trust and sowing chaos in the systems we rely on every day. Aviation is right at the top of that list.”
The post FBI Warns Travelers About Sophisticated Group of Hackers appeared first on Knewz.
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Author: Samyarup Chowdhury
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