Security News > 2024 > July > 17-Year-Old Linked to Scattered Spider Cybercrime Syndicate Arrested in U.K.

Law enforcement officials in the U.K. have arrested a 17-year-old boy from Walsall who is suspected to be a member of the notorious Scattered Spider cybercrime syndicate.

The teen's arrest, carried out in coordination with the U.K. National Crime Agency and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, comes a little over a month after another 22-year-old member of the e-crime syndicate from the U.K. was apprehended in Spain.

A recent report from Google-owned Mandiant revealed the attackers' pivot to encryptionless extortion attacks that aim to steal data from software-as-a-service applications.

The development comes as the DoJ announced the sentencing of Scott Raul Esparza, 24, of Texas, to nine months in prison for running a distributed denial-of-service attack solution named Astrostress between 2019 and 2022, following which he is expected to serve two years of supervised release.

"Customers of Astrostress.com were offered various levels of subscriptions - depending on how many attacks they wanted to conduct and with what power - and were charged accordingly," the DoJ said.

Esparza, who procured the attack servers and maintained the service, is said to have collaborated with Shamar Shattock, 21, of Florida.

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