But these scenes of chaos in recent weeks in the United Kingdom, United States, and Canada were caused instead by financially motivated cyberattacks—seemingly perpetrated by a collective of joyriding teens. A notorious cybercriminal group often called Scattered Spider is known for using social engineering techniques to infiltrate target companies by tricking IT help desk workers into granting them system access. The group’s escalating attacks in recent weeks, though, have shown that, far from being defeated, Scattered Spider is emboldened once again. In May, the UK’s National Crime Agency confirmed it was looking at Scattered Spider in connection to the attacks on British retailers. The Scattered Spider hackers are considered an offshoot of the Com, an amorphous network of potentially thousands of trolls and criminals, many of whom engage in harassment, extortion, and child exploitation.