From Social Engineering to Enterprise-Scale Disruption

In a recent Threat Vector podcast discussion, Principal Threat Researcher Kristopher Russo put today’s Muddled Libra operations in stark perspective:

This is an incredibly interesting group because what we’ve seen is a shift from being one primary focused [SMS attack], [to] less than two dozen attackers… We’ve seen it split into different teams, and these teams are structured kind of like what you would expect to see in the video games that these personas really like to play.

The numbers tell a dramatic story of escalation. Recent attacks have resulted in airlines shutting down operations, grocery stores left without food supplies, and financial losses exceeding $400 million for single victims. Unlike traditional ransomware groups that operate with predictable patterns, Muddled Libra’s modular approach allows them to scale their operations with devastating efficiency.

Sam Rubin, SVP of Consulting & Threat Intelligence at Unit 42, emphasizes the unprecedented nature of these attacks:

When we get an inbound [incident response request] and we think it may be muddled Libra… we know we’re in for a fight. We know that containment’s gonna be hard, that they’re gonna be coming back in, that the impact is potentially gonna be massive.

Muddled Libra has perfected what Russo calls targeting “the hardest to patch operating system: humans.” Their social engineering methodology bypasses traditional technical defenses entirely, focusing instead on manipulating help desk personnel and end users to gain legitimate access credentials.

The group’s evolution reflects a sophisticated understanding of modern enterprise environments. “These teams that are doing the attacks are learning the industries that they’re attacking,” Russo explains. “They’re forming these clusters of attacks because they’re going after similar organizations, industry by industry.”

Where other threat groups struggle to adapt to cloud environments, Muddled Libra has embraced them as a preferred attack vector. Their targeting of cloud-based platforms represents a strategic shift that exploits the security visibility gap many organizations face.

“The cloud is not soft and fuzzy. The cloud is hard and scary,” Russo notes, highlighting how attackers have recognized cloud infrastructure as a soft target while many security teams struggle with visibility and control.

Muddled Libra’s most significant evolution lies in their organizational structure. Rather than operating as a monolithic group, they’ve fragmented into at least seven distinct teams, each with specialized capabilities and objectives. This modular approach allows for unprecedented flexibility and efficiency.

“When a team leader identifies the organization and the type of attack they want to go after, they can pull in from this larger group of attackers to pull off this attack,” Russo explains. The specialization includes:

• Teams with deep knowledge of specific software environments.
• Groups focused on business process exploitation.
• Specialists in cloud infrastructure manipulation.
• Teams dedicated to destructive extortion operations.

This structure mirrors successful software development methodologies, allowing rapid deployment of specialized skills against targeted vulnerabilities.

Unit 42 Incident Response reveals critical patterns in successful versus failed containment efforts when it comes to Muddled Libra. Organizations that implement strong conditional access policies create significant barriers to lateral movement, even after initial compromise.

Rubin describes a telling example:

The company that ended up doing better, they had really strong conditional access policies on their network. While the threat actor was able to get in via social engineering… they were blocked from accessing Citrix, from accessing the cloud and other things.

However, many organizations fail at the intersection of technology and human factors:

Inadequate Executive-Level Planning: While security operations centers may conduct regular tabletop exercises, C-suite crisis response planning often lags behind. “A lot of organizations are pretty good these days at doing tabletop exercises within the SOC… but we see that fall down pretty quickly when you get into the C-suite,” Rubin notes.

Business Process Blind Spots: Organizations lack comprehensive redundancy planning for critical business applications. Single points of failure in SaaS platforms can cascade into customer-wide disruptions.

Cloud Visibility Challenges: The complexity of cloud environments has led to a dangerous delegation of security responsibilities. “The cloud has almost fallen back on DevOps and developers to do their own security because of how complex it is,” Russo warns.

Muddled Libra’s partnership with ransomware as a service operations, like DragonForce, represents a tactical evolution that significantly escalates potential business impact. Rather than simple data encryption, these operations now incorporate destructive elements targeting virtual infrastructure and cloud-based assets.

“We’ve seen this group attack assets, specifically virtual assets, in a destructive way through the assets’ own management tools,” Russo explains. The attackers leverage legitimate management platforms like ESXi to delete virtual machines and use cloud access platforms to destroy critical business systems.

This shift from traditional ransomware to destructive extortion fundamentally changes the response equation. Organizations can no longer rely solely on backup restoration when facing attacks that target the infrastructure itself.

Muddled Libra’s adoption of artificial intelligence capabilities adds another layer of complexity to their operations. Unit 42 has documented their use of deepfake voice technology for help desk manipulation and AI-powered tools for network navigation and lateral movement.

Rubin frames the potential impact in stark terms:

Layer in AI, layer in LLMs where you can start to automate parts of the attack chain, and 1,000 victims goes to over 10,000 or more.

This automation potential transforms limited human resources from a constraint into a force multiplier.

The defensive response requires similar technological advancement: “Organizations should be fighting AI with AI,” suggests leveraging machine learning for behavioral analysis and anomaly detection rather than relying on traditional rule-based systems.

Effective defense against Muddled Libra requires recognition that cybersecurity has become fundamentally a human challenge enabled by technology. Organizations must address both technical vulnerabilities and human factors comprehensively.

Dynamic Conditional Access Management: Moving beyond static, rule-based systems to risk-based, contextual authentication that adapts to changing threat patterns.

Comprehensive Stakeholder Involvement: Extending crisis response planning beyond the security team to include executive leadership, business operations and external partners.

Cloud-Native Security Integration: Developing unified visibility across hybrid environments with behavioral analysis capabilities that can detect anomalous patterns regardless of location.

Business Process Redundancy: Creating failover capabilities for critical SaaS applications and cloud-based business functions.

The sophistication and impact of Muddled Libra operations signal a broader transformation in the cybercrime landscape. Their success with social engineering and cloud-first attacks creates a blueprint that other threat actors will inevitably adopt and adapt.

Organizations can no longer treat social engineering as a secondary concern or delegate cloud security to development teams. The convergence of human manipulation, cloud exploitation and AI-powered automation demands comprehensive defensive strategies that address technology, processes and human factors as integrated components of organizational resilience.

As Rubin concludes:

Organizations need to be looking at, on the defensive side, how they implement AI into their workflows to give them increased visibility and increased speed to detect threats. There is no way that we are going to defeat these adversaries if we are working at manual speed.

The unprecedented scale and sophistication of Muddled Libra operations, combined with their ability to cause industry-wide disruption, elevates cybersecurity from an IT concern to a strategic business imperative. Success requires leadership recognition that effective defense depends as much on human factors, organizational culture and crisis response capabilities as on any individual technology deployment.

The question isn’t whether your organization will face these evolving threats, but whether you’ll be prepared with the approach necessary to maintain resilience.