{"id":669541,"date":"2026-07-02T09:42:06","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T09:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669541\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T09:42:06","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T09:42:06","slug":"alleged-scattered-spider-hacker-arrested-in-finland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/669541\/","title":{"rendered":"Alleged Scattered Spider hacker arrested in Finland"},"content":{"rendered":"

A teenager has been arrested for alleged involvement with the Scattered Spider hacking group, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) has said.<\/p>\n

Peter Stokes, 19, was arrested in Finland in April and extradited to the US following an Interpol Red Notice.<\/p>\n

He has been charged with computer intrusion, conspiracy and fraud, which the DoJ said came after “years of work”.<\/p>\n

Scattered Spider has been involved in hacks resulting in more than $100m (\u00a375m) in ransom payments, according to the DoJ. <\/p>\n

The charges come after two young men pleaded guilty<\/a> to offences connected to the \u00a339m 2024 Transport for London cyber-attack, which the UK National Crime Agency (NCA) believed was conducted by the group.<\/p>\n

Stokes, a dual US-Estonian national, appeared in federal court in Chicago on Tuesday and was ordered to remain in custody.<\/p>\n

The complaint alleges that, among other offences, he and other co-conspirators made a ransom demand of around $8m in cryptocurrency to a luxury jewellery retailer after stealing its data last year.<\/p>\n

No ransom was paid after the unnamed company “evicted” the hackers, the DoJ said.<\/p>\n

However, it added, the jewellery company lost at least $2m due to business disruption, investigation and mitigation of the threat.<\/p>\n

Both the FBI – working in Copenhagen and Chicago – and Finland’s National Bureau of Investigation worked on the operation.<\/p>\n

The charges against Stokes come after two men pleaded guilty last month to offences in connection with a massive cyber attack on Transport for London in 2024.<\/p>\n

Investigators from the NCA said they believed the 2024 “network intrusion” – in which around 10 million people’s data was stolen<\/a> – was carried out by Scattered Spider.<\/p>\n

The NCA told the BBC Scattered Spider was also a key part of their investigation into cyber attacks on British retailers Co-op and M&S last year.<\/p>\n

The group’s members are thought to be young, native English speakers from the US and UK.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A teenager has been arrested for alleged involvement with the Scattered Spider hacking group, the US Department of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":669542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-669541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=669541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/669542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=669541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=669541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=669541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}