内容摘要：Rebel groups in Colombia are notorious for forcibly recruiting children but the boy's abduction from his home at gunpoint nevertheless shocked locals.

Rebel groups in Colombia are notorious for forcibly recruiting children but the boy's abduction from his home at gunpoint nevertheless shocked locals.

Establishing who the people are behind DragonForce is tricky, and it's not known where they are located. When I asked their Telegram account about this, I didn't get an answer. Although the hackers didn't tell me explicitly that they were behind the recent hacks on M&S and Harrods, they confirmed a report in Bloomberg that spelt it out.Of course, they are criminals and could be lying.

Some researchers say DragonForce are based in Malaysia, while others say Russia, where many of these groups are thought to be located. We do know that DragonForce has no specific targets or agenda other than making money.And if DragonForce is just the service for other criminals to use – who is pulling the strings and choosing to attack UK retailers?In the early stages of the M&S hack, unknown sources told cyber news site Bleeping Computer that evidence is pointing to a loose collective of cyber criminals known as Scattered Spider - but this has yet to be confirmed by the police.

Scattered Spider is not really a group in the normal sense of the word. It's more of a community which organises across sites like Discord, Telegram and forums – hence the description "scattered" which was given to them by cyber security researchers at CrowdStrike.They are known to be English-speaking and probably in the UK and the US and young – in some cases teenagers. We know this from researchers and previous arrests. In November the US charged five men and boys in their twenties and teens for alleged Scattered Spider activity. One of them is 22-year-old Scottish man Tyler Buchanan, who has not made a plea, and the rest are US based.

Crackdowns by police seem to have had little effect on the hackers' determination, though. On Thursday, Google's cyber security division issued warnings that it was starting to see Scattered Spider-like attacks on US retailers now too.

As for the hackers I spoke to on Telegram, they declined to answer whether or not they were Scattered Spider. "We won't answer that question" is all they said.M&S admitted on Tuesday that some

in the hack of its systems.Customers are still unable to make online orders with M&S, nearly three weeks after the retailer was forced to suspend them.

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