UK blames Russia, while researchers point to Scattered Spider

UK Finance Minister Rachel Reeves blames Moscow for Britain's latest cyber problems, and says there is evidence pointing to the attackers being very close to Moscow.

In her interview on ITV On Monday, Reeves suggested that Moscow's footprints were in recent cyber incidents affecting major British companies. The comments appeared to refer to recent attacks on Marks & Spencer, Co-op, Harrods and Jaguar Land Rover, although the finance minister declined to name specific cases.

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Regardless, he insisted that the threat facing British businesses “comes from hostile states, states like Russia” and claimed that “some of these attacks are coming from Russia by Russian-backed entities,” without providing evidence to support the claim.

Days before the interview, however, the UK’s National Crime Agency announced that it had arrested four suspects in the Marks & Spencer breach: three Britons and a Latvian. Investigators say the four belong to Scattered Spider, an English-speaking social engineering group that has hit companies on both sides of the Atlantic. The NCA claimed to have linked the four suspects to the recent attacks on the Co-op and Harrods.

Meanwhile, researchers believe that the group, rather than being run by Kremlin-funded entities, is made up primarily of young criminals from the UK and US, skilled in SIM-swapping and phishing.

The same group has also been linked to the recent cyberattack on Jaguar Land Rover that shut down factories across the UK and abroad for weeks, costing millions in lost production.

Authorities, meanwhile, have labeled Scattered Spider a criminal gang, not a state-sponsored group—unless the Kremlin suddenly started hiring Mancunians and Californians to do the dirty work. Reeves’ claim sits awkwardly alongside the NCA’s arrests and years of analysis. To date, no credible investigator has labeled them a Russian front.

ITV even followed Reeves' interview with an article titled " Was the chancellor right to accuse Russia of being behind recent UK cyber attacks?" a question that seems to have already been answered.

Reeves' comments may be political and a reminder to voters that Russia remains a hostile state. But unless the government produces evidence linking Moscow to the recent attacks, the evidence points to a different culprit: a group of English-speaking thugs who have no problem locking a multinational out of their bedrooms.

For businesses trying to understand the threats they face, this distinction matters.

giorgos

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