Defending Against Scattered Spider

🕷️ Fighting Scattered Spider with the Basics: Practical Defenses Every Company Should Implement

Over the past few years, threat actors operating under names like Scattered Spider have caused significant damage through social engineering, identity compromise, and hands-on-keyboard attacks. Despite their sophistication, many of their tactics still rely on exploiting fundamental gaps in identity, access, and detection.

The good news? You don’t need a seven-figure cybersecurity budget to disrupt their playbook.

Here are five essential practices that organizations of all sizes can implement today to raise the bar:

1. Lock Down Identity: MFA Isn’t Optional

Scattered Spider often starts by phishing credentials and then bypassing weak or unenforced MFA. Every privileged user (IT, finance, support) must have phishing-resistant MFA—think FIDO2 keys or platform authenticators. (something like Yubikeys) SMS-based MFA is not enough.

✅ Tip: Review all SSO integrations and require strong MFA across all access points—not just the VPN. No exceptions.

✅ Tip: Make sure your sys admins and helpdesk are not using the same credentials for admin things as they do to check email and browse the internet. These should be completely separate accounts.

2. Harden Your Helpdesk

Many of Scattered Spider’s breaches start with a phone call to support. If your helpdesk resets passwords or MFA based on voice or easily guessed answers, you’re at risk.

✅ Tip: Implement strict helpdesk verification processes, such as callback procedures, video verification, or multi-person approval for high-risk changes.

✅ Tip: Consider a ‘No Password Reset’ group (include resetting MFA here as well). This should include your sys admins, some executives, and your security teams. Anyone with access to important systems. Don’t let the helpdesk reset these passwords or if you do strictly follow verification procedures. Force them to work with your security team to reset password or MFA tokens.

3. Shrink the Blast Radius: Least Privilege and Segmentation

These attackers move fast once inside. Flat networks and overprovisioned access accounts let them jump from user to domain admin in hours.

✅ Tip: Use role-based access control and just-in-time admin privileges. Regularly audit AD group memberships and cloud IAM policies.

4. Simulate and Train Against Social Engineering

If you haven't trained your team to recognize sophisticated voice or SMS-based phishing, you're behind. These actors are skilled impersonators and don't just send emails.

✅ Tip: Regularly run red-team-style social engineering tests—not just phishing emails. Make it part of your tabletop exercises.

5. Turn on Logging—Then Actually Look at It

Scattered Spider doesn’t always use malware. They live off the land using SSH, RDP, PowerShell, and legitimate tools. If you're not monitoring your logs, you won’t catch them.

✅ Tip: Enable and centralize logs for Okta, Azure AD, VPN, EDR, and key servers. Use detections for anomalous login patterns, MFA resets, and privilege escalations.

✅Tip: Setup SHTF alerts for password or token resets for highly privileged users.

Final Thoughts

You don’t need to predict the next threat actor. Focus on your fundamentals and assume that someone will try to bypass your identity, abuse your helpdesk, and move laterally. Scattered Spider may be high profile, but the methods are disturbingly familiar—and avoidable.

If you're not sure where to start, or want to test your program's resilience, I can help.