Two men pleaded guilty in the United Kingdom this week to criminal charges stemming from an August 2024 cyberattack that crippled Transport for London, the entity responsible for the public transport network in the Greater London area. The duo were key members of a prolific cybercrime group known as Scattered Spider, and their guilty pleas came on the first day of what was expected to be a six-week trial.

Thalha Jubair, 20, of East London and 18-year-old Owen Flowers of Walsall admitted conspiring to commit unauthorized acts against Transport for London computer systems and causing risk of serious damage to human welfare. According to a report from the BBC, Flowers alone admitted to being part of a conspiracy to hack into U.S. based healthcare providers SSM Health Care Corporation and Sutter Health in September 2024.

Jubair is also wanted by U.S. law enforcement agencies. In September 2025, prosecutors in New Jersey unsealed an indictment alleging Jubair and other Scattered Spider members committed computer fraud, wire fraud, and money laundering in relation to 120 computer network intrusions involving 47 U.S. entities between May 2022 and September 2025, and that the group’s victims paid at least $115 million in ransom payments.

In July 2025, KrebsOnSecurity reported that Flowers and Jubair were arrested in the United Kingdom in connection with Scattered Spider ransom attacks against the retailers Marks & Spencer and Harrods, and the British food retailer Co-op Group. Multiple sources familiar with those investigations said Flowers was the Scattered Spider member who anonymously gave interviews to the media in the days after the group’s September 2023 ransomware attacks disrupted operations at Las Vegas casinos operated by MGM Resorts and Caesars Entertainment.

According to prosecutors, Jubair co-ran a bustling Telegram channel called Star Chat, the home of a SIM-swapping group that used voice- and SMS-based phishing attacks to steal credentials from employees at the major wireless providers in the U.S. and U.K. The group would then use that access to sell a service that could redirect a target’s phone number to a device the attackers controlled and intercept the victim’s calls and text messages (including one-time codes for multi-factor authentication).

New Jersey prosecutors also allege Jubair also was involved in a mass SMS phishing campaign during the summer of 2022 that stole single sign-on credentials from employees at hundreds of companies. That weeks-long SMS phishing campaign led to intrusions and data thefts at more than 130 organizations, including LastPass, DoorDash, Mailchimp, Plex and Signal.

KrebsOnSecurity reported last year that one of Jubair’s alter egos at age 15 was “Everlynn,” a hacker who sold fraudulent “emergency data requests” that used compromised police and government email addresses to demand subscriber data (e.g. username, IP/email address) from major tech companies, claiming the requests concerned urgent matters of life and death and could not wait for a court order.

In April 2026, 24-year-old British national and Scattered Spider member Tyler “Tylerb” Buchanan pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft for participating in the group’s SMS phishing spree in the summer of 2022. The government said Buchanan, Jubair and others used the credentials harvested in that phishing campaign to steal at least $8 million in cryptocurrency from victims throughout the United States. Buchanan is currently scheduled to be sentenced on October 2.

In August 2025, 20-year-old Scattered Spider member from Florida named Noah Michael Urban was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $13 million in restitution, after pleading guilty to charges of wire fraud and conspiracy.

The U.S. Department of Justice says three alleged Scattered Spider defendants indicted along with Buchanan still face charges, including Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 24, a.k.a. “AD,” of College Station, Texas; Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 21, of Dallas, Texas; and Joel Martin Evans, 26, a.k.a. “joeleoli,” of Jacksonville, North Carolina.

Flowers and Jubair are slated to be sentenced in a London court on July 15, 2026.

Verizon’s 2026 DBIR finds vulnerability exploitation has overtaken credential abuse as the leading breach vector, as AI accelerates attacks, patching delays worsen, and ransomware and third-party compromises continue to surge.

The post Verizon DBIR 2026: Vulnerability Exploitation Overtakes Credential Theft as Top Breach Vector appeared first on SecurityWeek.

A 24-year-old British national and senior member of the cybercrime group “Scattered Spider” has pleaded guilty to wire fraud conspiracy and aggravated identity theft. Tyler Robert Buchanan admitted his role in a series of text-message phishing attacks in the summer of 2022 that allowed the group to hack into at least a dozen major technology companies and steal tens of millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency from investors.

Buchanan’s hacker handle “Tylerb” once graced a leaderboard in the English-language criminal hacking scene that tracked the most accomplished cyber thieves. Now in U.S. custody and awaiting sentencing, the Dundee, Scotland native is facing the possibility of more than 20 years in prison.

Scattered Spider is the name given to a prolific English-speaking cybercrime group known for using social engineering tactics to break into companies and steal data for ransom, often impersonating employees or contractors to deceive IT help desks into granting access.

As part of his guilty plea, Buchanan admitted conspiring with other Scattered Spider members to launch tens of thousands of SMS-based phishing attacks in 2022 that led to intrusions at a number of technology companies, including Twilio, LastPass, DoorDash, and Mailchimp.

The group then used data stolen in those breaches to carry out SIM-swapping attacks that siphoned funds from individual cryptocurrency investors. In an unauthorized SIM-swap, crooks transfer the target’s phone number to a device they control and intercept any text messages or phone calls to the victim’s device — such as one-time passcodes for authentication and password reset links sent via SMS. The U.S. Justice Department said Buchanan admitted to stealing at least $8 million in virtual currency from individual victims throughout the United States.

FBI investigators tied Buchanan to the 2022 SMS phishing attacks after discovering the same username and email address was used to register numerous phishing domains seen in the campaign. The domain registrar NameCheap found that less than a month before the phishing spree, the account that registered those domains logged in from an Internet address in the U.K. FBI investigators said the Scottish police told them the address was leased to Buchanan throughout 2022.

As first reported by KrebsOnSecurity, Buchanan fled the United Kingdom in February 2023, after a rival cybercrime gang hired thugs to invade his home, assault his mother, and threaten to burn him with a blowtorch unless he gave up the keys to his cryptocurrency wallet. That same year, U.K. investigators found a device at Buchanan’s Scotland residence that included data stolen from SMS phishing victims and seed phrases from cryptocurrency theft victims.

Buchanan was arrested by Spanish authorities in June 2024 while trying to board a flight to Italy. He was extradited to the United States and has remained in U.S. federal custody since April 2025.

Buchanan is the second known Scattered Spider member to plead guilty. Noah Michael Urban, 21, of Palm Coast, Fla., was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison last year and ordered to pay $13 million in restitution. Three other alleged co-conspirators — Ahmed Hossam Eldin Elbadawy, 24, a.k.a. “AD,” of College Station, Texas; Evans Onyeaka Osiebo, 21, of Dallas, Texas; and Joel Martin Evans, 26, a.k.a. “joeleoli,” of Jacksonville, North Carolina – still face criminal charges.

Two other alleged Scattered Spider members will soon be tried in the United Kingdom. Owen Flowers, 18, and Thalha Jubair, 20, are facing charges related to the hacking and extortion of several large U.K. retailers, the London transit system, and healthcare providers in the United States. Both have pleaded not guilty, and their trial is slated to begin in June.

Investigators say the Scattered Spider suspects are part of a sprawling cybercriminal community online known as “The Com,” wherein hackers from different cliques boast publicly on Telegram and Discord about high-profile cyber thefts that almost invariably begin with social engineering — tricking people over the phone, email or SMS into giving away credentials that allow remote access to corporate internal networks.

One of the more popular SIM-swapping channels on Telegram has long maintained a leaderboard of the most rapacious SIM-swappers, indexed by their supposed conquests in stealing cryptocurrency. That leaderboard previously listed Buchanan’s hacker alias Tylerb at #65 (out of 100 hackers), with Urban’s moniker “Sosa” coming in at #24.

Buchanan’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for August 21, 2026. According to the Justice Department, he faces a statutory maximum sentence of 22 years in federal prison. However, any sentence the judge hands down in this case may be significantly tempered by a number of mitigating factors in the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, including the defendant’s age, criminal history, time already served in U.S. custody, and the degree to which they cooperated with federal authorities.

Last week on Malwarebytes Labs:

• WhisperPair exposes Bluetooth earbuds and headphones to tracking and eavesdropping
• Dutch police sell fake tickets to show how easily scams work
• “Reprompt” attack lets attackers steal data from Microsoft Copilot
• Phishing scammers are posting fake “account restricted” comments on LinkedIn
• Online shoppers at risk as Magecart skimming hits major payment networks
• How real software downloads can hide remote backdoors
• Data broker fined after selling Alzheimer’s patient info and millions of sensitive profiles
• Why iPhone users should update and restart their devices now
• Received an Instagram password reset email? Here’s what you need to know
• Regulators around the world are scrutinizing Grok over sexual deepfakes
• Celebrating reviews and recognitions for Malwarebytes in 2025

Stay safe!

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WhisperPair is a set of attacks that lets an attacker hijack many popular Bluetooth audio accessories that use Google Fast Pair and, in some cases, even track their location via Google’s Find Hub network—all without requiring any user interaction.

Researchers at the Belgian University of Leuven revealed a collection of vulnerabilities they found in audio accessories that use Google’s Fast Pair protocol. The affected accessories are sold by 10 different companies: Sony, Jabra, JBL, Marshall, Xiaomi, Nothing, OnePlus, Soundcore, Logitech, and Google itself.

Google Fast Pair is a feature that makes pairing Bluetooth earbuds, headphones and similar accessories with Android devices quick and seamless, and syncs them across a user’s Google account.

The Google Fast Pair Service (GFPS) utilizes Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to discover nearby Bluetooth devices. Many big-name audio brands use Fast Pair in their flagship products, so the potential attack surface consists of hundreds of millions of devices.

The weakness lies in the fact that Fast Pair skips checking whether a device is in pairing mode. As a result, a device controlled by an attacker, such as a laptop, can trigger Fast Pair even when the earbuds are sitting in a user’s ear or pocket, then quickly complete a normal Bluetooth pairing and take full control.

What that control enables depends on the capabilities of the hijacked device. This can range from playing disturbing noises to recording audio via built-in microphones.

It gets worse if the attacker is the first to pair the accessory with an Android device. In that case, the attacker’s Owner Account Key–designating their Google account as the legitimate owner’s—to the accessory. If the Fast Pair accessory also supports Google’s Find Hub network, which many people use to locate lost items, the attacker may then be able to track the accessory’s location.

Google classified this vulnerability, tracked under CVE‑2025‑36911, as critical. However, the only real fix is a firmware or software update from the accessory manufacturer, so users need to check with their specific brand and install accessory updates, as updating the phone alone does not fix the issue.

How to stay safe

To find out whether your device is vulnerable, the researchers published a list and recommend keeping all accessories updated. The research team tested 25 commercial devices from 16 manufacturers using 17 different Bluetooth chipsets. They were able to take over the connection and eavesdrop on the microphone on 68% of the tested devices.​

These are the devices the researchers found to be vulnerable, but it’s possible that others are affected as well:

• Anker soundcore Liberty 4 NC
• Google Pixel Buds Pro 2​
• JBL TUNE BEAM​
• Jabra Elite 8 Active​
• Marshall MOTIF II A.N.C.​
• Nothing Ear (a)​
• OnePlus Nord Buds 3 Pro​
• Sony WF-1000XM5​
• Sony WH-1000XM4​
• Sony WH-1000XM5​
• Sony WH-1000XM6​
• Sony WH-CH720N​
• Xiaomi Redmi Buds 5 Pro​

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The critical issue impacts Bluetooth audio accessories with improper Google Fast Pair implementations.

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