Background
UNC3944, which overlaps with public reporting on Scattered Spider, is a financially-motivated threat actor characterized by its persistent use of social engineering and brazen communications with victims. In early operations, UNC3944 largely targeted telecommunications-related organizations to support SIM swap operations. However, after shifting to ransomware and data theft extortion in early 2023, they impacted organizations in a broader range of industries. Since then, we have regularly observed UNC3944 conduct waves of targeting against a specific sector, such as financial services organizations in late 2023 and food services in May 2024. Notably, UNC3944 has also previously targeted prominent brands, possibly in an attempt to gain prestige and increased attention by news media.
Google Threat Intelligence Group (GTIG) observed a decline in UNC3944 activity after 2024 law enforcement actions against individuals allegedly associated with the group. Threat actors will often temporarily halt or significantly curtail operations after an arrest, possibly to reduce law enforcement attention, rebuild capabilities and/or partnerships, or shift to new tooling to evade detection. UNC3944’s existing ties to a broader community of threat actors could potentially help them recover from law enforcement actions more quickly.
Recent public reporting has suggested that threat actors used tactics consistent with Scattered Spider to target a UK retail organization and deploy DragonForce ransomware. Subsequent reporting by BBC News indicates that actors associated with DragonForce claimed responsibility for attempted attacks at multiple UK retailers. Notably, the operators of DragonForce ransomware recently claimed control of RansomHub, a ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS) that seemingly ceased operations in March of this year. UNC3944 was a RansomHub affiliate in 2024, after the ALPHV (aka Blackcat) RaaS shut down.While GTIG has not independently confirmed the involvement of UNC3944 or the DragonForce RaaS, over the past few years, retail organizations have been increasingly posted on tracked data leak sites (DLS) used by extortion actors to pressure victims and/or leak stolen victim data. Retail organizations accounted for 11 percent of DLS victims in 2025 thus far, up from about 8.5 percent in 2024 and 6 percent in 2022 and 2023. It is plausible that threat actors including UNC3944 view retail organizations as attractive targets, given that they typically possess large quantities of personally identifiable information (PII) and financial data. Further, these companies may be more likely to pay a ransom demand if a ransomware attack impacts their ability to process financial transactions.
Identity
Positive Identify Verification
UNC3944 has proven to be very prolific in using social engineering techniques to impersonate users when contacting the help desk. Therefore, further securing the “positive identity” process is critical.
If a suspected compromise is imminent or has occurred, temporarily disable or enhance validation for self-service password reset methods. Any account management activities should require a positive identity verification as the first step. Additionally, employees should be required to authenticate using strong authentication PRIOR to changing authentication methods (e.g., adding a new MFA device). Additionally, implement use of:
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Trusted Locations
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Notification of authentication / security changes
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Out-of-band verification for high-risk changes. For example, require a call-back to a registered number or confirmation via a known corporate email before proceeding with any sensitive request.
Avoid reliance on publicly available personal data for verification (e.g., DOB, last 4 SSN) as UNC3944 often possesses this information. Use internal-only knowledge or real-time presence verification when possible.
Temporarily disable self-service MFA resets during elevated threat periods, and route all such changes through manual help desk workflows with enhanced scrutiny.
Strong Authentication
To prevent against social engineering or other methods used to bypass authentication controls:
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Remove SMS, phone call, and/or email as authentication controls.
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Utilize an authenticator app that requires phishing resistant MFA (e.g., number matching and/or geo-verification).
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If possible, transition to passwordless authentication.
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Leverage FIDO2 security keys for authenticating identities that are assigned privileged roles.
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Ensure administrative users cannot register or use legacy MFA methods, even if those are permitted for lower-tier users.
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Enforce multi-context criteria to enrich the authentication transaction. Examples include not only validating the identity, but also specific device and location attributes as part of the authentication transaction.
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For organizations that leverage Google Workspace, these concepts can be enforced by using context-aware access policies.
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For organizations that leverage Microsoft Entra ID, these concepts can be enforced by using a Conditional Access Policy.
MFA Registration and Modification
To prevent compromised credentials from being leveraged for modifying and registering an attacker-controlled MFA method:
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Review authentication methods available for user registration and disallow any unnecessary or duplicative methods.
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Restrict MFA registration and modification actions to only be permissible from trusted IP locations and based upon device compliance. For organizations that leverage Microsoft Entra ID, this can be accomplished using a Conditional Access Policy.
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If a suspected compromise has occurred, MFA re-registration may be required. This action should only be permissible from corporate locations and/or trusted IP locations.
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Review specific IP locations that can bypass the requirement for MFA. If using Microsoft Entra ID, these can be in Named Locations and the legacy Service Settings.
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Investigate and alert when the same MFA method or phone number is registered across multiple user accounts, which may indicate attacker-controlled device registration.
Administrative Roles
To prevent against privilege escalation and further access to an environment:
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For privileged access, decouple the organization’s identity store (e.g., Active Directory) from infrastructure platforms, services, and cloud admin consoles. Organizations should create local administrator accounts (e.g., local VMware VCenter Admin account). Local administrator accounts should adhere to the following principles:
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Created with long and complex passwords
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Passwords should not be temporarily stored within the organization’s password management or vault solution
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Enforcement of Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)
Restrict administrative portals to only be accessible from trusted locations and with privileged identities.
Leverage just-in-time controls for leveraging (“checking out”) credentials associated with privileged actions.
Enforce access restrictions and boundaries that follow the principle of least-privilege for accessing and administering cloud resources.
Enforce that privileged accounts are hardened to prevent exposure or usage on non-Tier 0 or non-PAW endpoints.
Playbooks
Modern-day authentication is predicated on more than just a singular password. Therefore, organizations should ensure that processes and associated playbooks include steps to:
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Revoke tokens and access keys.
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Review MFA device registrations.
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Review changes to authentication requirements.
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Review newly enrolled devices and endpoints.
Endpoints
Device Compliance and Validation
An authentication transaction should not only include strong requirements for identity verification, but also require that the device be authenticated and validated. Organizations should consider the ability to:
Confirming the organization’s Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) agent is installed and actively running. Enforce EDR installation and monitoring for all managed endpoint devices.
Rogue / Unauthorized Endpoints
To prevent against threat actors leveraging rogue endpoints to access an environment, organizations should:
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Monitor for rogue bastion hosts or virtual machines that are either newly created or recently joined to a managed domain.
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Harden policies to restrict the ability to join devices to Entra or on-premises Active Directory.
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Review authentication logs for devices that contain default Windows host names.
Lateral Movement Hardening
To prevent against lateral movement using compromised credentials, organizations should:
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Limit the ability for local accounts to be used for remote (network-based) authentication.
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Disable or restrict local administrative and/or hidden shares from being remotely accessible.
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Enforce local firewall rules to block inbound SMB, RDP, WinRM, PowerShell, & WMI.
GPOs: User Rights Assignment Lockdown (Active Directory)
For domain-based privileged and service accounts, where possible, organizations should restrict the ability for accounts to be leveraged for remote authentication to endpoints. This can be accomplished using a Group Policy Object (GPO) configuration for the following user rights assignments:
Applications and Resources
Virtual Private Network (VPN) Access
Threat actors may attempt to change or disable VPN agents to limit network visibility by security teams. Therefore, organizations should:
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Disable the ability for end users to modify VPN agent configurations.
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Ensure appropriate logging when configuration changes are made to VPN agents.
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For managed devices, consider an “Always-On” VPN configuration to ensure continuous protection.
Privileged Access Management (PAM) Systems
To prevent against threat actors attempting to gain access to privileged access management (PAM) systems, organizations should:
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Isolate and enforce network and identity access restrictions for enterprise password managers or privileged access management (PAM) systems. This should also include leveraging dedicated and segmented servers / appliances for PAM systems, which are isolated from enterprise infrastructure and virtualization platforms.
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Reduce the scope of accounts that have access to PAM systems, in addition to requiring strong authentication (MFA).
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Enforce role-based access controls (RBAC) within PAM systems, restricting the scope of accounts that can be accessed (based upon an assigned role).
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Follow the principle of just-in-time (JIT) access for checking-out credentials stored in PAM systems.
Virtualization Infrastructure
To prevent against threat actors attempting to gain access to virtualization infrastructure, organizations should:
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Isolate and restrict access to ESXi hosts / vCenter Server Appliances.
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Ensure that backups of virtual machines are isolated, secured and immutable if possible.
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Unbind the authentication for administrative access to virtualization platforms from the centralized identity provider (IdP). This includes individual ESXi hosts and vCenter Servers.
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Proactively rotate local root / administrative passwords for privileged identities associated with virtualization platforms.
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If possible use stronger MFA and bind to local SSO for all administrative access to virtualization infrastructure.
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Enforce randomized passwords for local root / administrative identities correlating to each virtualized host that is part of an aggregate pool.
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Disable / restrict SSH (shell) access to virtualization platforms.
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Enable lockdown mode on all ESXi hosts.
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Enhance monitoring to identify potential malicious / suspicious authentication attempts and activities associated with virtualization platforms.
Backup Infrastructure
To prevent against threat actors attempting to gain access to backup infrastructure and data, organizations should:
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Leverage unique and separate (non-identity provider integrated) credentials for accessing and managing backup infrastructure, in addition to the enforcement of MFA for the accounts.
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Ensure that backup servers are isolated from the production environment and reside within a dedicated network. To further protect backups, they should be within an immutable backup solution.
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Implement access controls that restrict inbound traffic and protocols for accessing administrative interfaces associated with backup infrastructure.
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Periodically validate the protection and integrity of backups by simulating adversarial behaviors (red teaming).
Endpoint Security Management
To prevent against threat actors weaponizing endpoint security and management technologies such as EDR and patch management tools, organizations should:
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Segment administrative access to endpoint security tooling platforms.
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Reduce the scope of identities that have the ability to create, edit, or delete Group Policy Objects (GPOs) in on-premises Active Directory.
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If Intune is leveraged, enforce Intune access policies that require multi-administrator approval (MMA) to approve and enforce changes.
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Monitor and review unauthorized access to EDR and patch management technologies.
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Monitor script and application deployment on endpoints and systems using EDR and patch management technologies.
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Review and monitor “allow-listed” executables, processes, paths, and applications.
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Inventory installed applications on endpoints and review for potential unauthorized installations of remote access (RATs) and reconnaissance tools.
Cloud Resources
To prevent against threat actors leveraging access to cloud infrastructure for additional persistence and access, organizations should:
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Monitor and review cloud resource configurations to identify and investigate newly created resources, exposed services, or other unauthorized configurations.
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Monitor cloud infrastructure for newly created or modified network security group (NSG) rules, firewall rules, or publicly exposed resources that can be remotely accessed.
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Monitor for the creation of programmatic keys and credentials (e.g., access keys).
Network Infrastructure
Access Restrictions
To proactively identify exposed applications, ingress pathways, and to reduce the risk of unauthorized access, organizations should:
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Leverage vulnerability scanning to perform an external unauthenticated scan to identify publicly exposed domains, IPs, and CIDR IP ranges.
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Enforce strong authentication (e.g., phishing-resistant MFA) for accessing any applications and services that are publicly accessible.
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For sensitive data and applications, enforce connectivity to cloud environments / SaaS applications to only be permissible from specific (trusted) IP ranges.
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Block TOR exit node and VPS IP ranges.
Network Segmentation
The terminology of “Trusted Service Infrastructure” (TSI) is typically associated with management interfaces for platforms and technologies that provide core services for an organization. Examples include:
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Asset and Patch Management Tools
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Network Management Tools and Devices
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Virtualization Platforms
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Backup Technologies
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Security Tooling
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Privileged Access Management Systems
To minimize the direct access and exposure of the management plane for TSI, organizations should:
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Restrict access to TSI to only originate from internal / hardened network segments or PAWs.
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Create detections focused on monitoring network traffic patterns for directly accessing TSI, and alert on anomalies or suspicious traffic.
Egress Restrictions
To restrict the ability for command-and-control and reduce the capabilities for mass data exfiltration, organizations should:
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Restrict egress communications from all servers. Organizations should prioritize enforcing egress restrictions from servers associated with TSI, Active Directory domain controllers, and crown jewel application and data servers.
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Block outbound traffic to malicious domain names, IP addresses, and domain names/addresses associated with remote access tools (RATs).
Monitoring / Detections
Reconnaissance
Upon initial compromise, UNC3944 is known to search for documentation on topics such as: user provisioning, MFA and/or device registration, network diagrams, and shared credentials in documents or spreadsheets.
UNC3944 will also use network reconnaissance tools like ADRecon, ADExplorer, and SharpHound. Therefore, organizations should:
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Ensure any sites or portals that include these documents have access restrictions to only required accounts.
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Sweep for documents and spreadsheets that may contain shared credentials and remove them.
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Implement alerting rules on endpoints with EDR agents for possible execution of known reconnaissance tools.
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If utilizing an Identity monitoring solution, ensure detection rules are enabled and alerts are created for any reconnaissance and discovery detections.
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Implement an automated mechanism to continuously monitor domain registrations. Identify domains that mimic the organization’s naming conventions, for instance: [YourOrganizationName]-helpdesk.com
or [YourOrganizationName]-SSO.com
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MFA Registration
To further harden the MFA registration process, organizations should:
Verify the legitimacy of new registrations against expected user behavior and any onboarding or device enrollment records.
Contact users if new registrations are detected to confirm if the activity is intentional.
Collaboration and Communication Platforms
To prevent against social engineering and/or unauthorized access or modifications to communication platforms, organizations should:
Provide awareness training to employees and staff to directly contact the organization’s helpdesk if they receive suspicious calls or messages.
The following is a Microsoft Defender advanced hunting query example. The query is written to detect when an external account (attempting to impersonate the help desk) attempts to contact the organization’s users.
Note: The DisplayName field can be modified to include other relevant fields specific to the organization (such as “IT Support” or “ServiceDesk”).
for the details.