A cyberattack that shut down two of the top casinos in Las Vegas last year quickly became one of the most riveting security stories of 2023: It was the first known case of native English-speaking hackers in the United States and Britain teaming up with ransomware gangs based in Russia. But that made-for-Hollywood narrative has eclipsed a far more hideous trend: Many of these young, Western cybercriminals are also members of fast-growing online groups that exist solely to bully, stalk, harass and extort vulnerable teens into physically harming themselves and others.
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In September 2023, a Russian ransomware group known as ALPHV/Black Cat claimed credit for an intrusion at the MGM Resorts hotel chain that quickly brought MGM’s casinos in Las Vegas to a standstill. While MGM was still trying to evict the intruders from its systems, an individual who claimed to have firsthand knowledge of the hack contacted multiple media outlets to offer interviews about how it all went down.
One account of the hack came from a 17-year-old in the United Kingdom, who told reporters the intrusion began when one of the English-speaking hackers phoned a tech support person at MGM and tricked them into resetting the password for an employee account.
The security firm CrowdStrike dubbed the group “Scattered Spider,” a recognition that the MGM hackers came from different hacker cliques scattered across an ocean of Telegram and Discord servers dedicated to financially-oriented cybercrime.
Collectively, this archipelago of crime-focused chat communities is known as “The Com,” and it functions as a kind of distributed cybercriminal social network that facilitates instant collaboration.
But mostly, The Com is a place where cybercrimi ..
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