Operation Africa Cyber Surge II
The police operation, with combined efforts of Interpol, African law enforcement and private-sector security firms, commenced in April and lasted for four months. It was conducted in order to exterminate cyber malpractices like phishing, business email compromise (BEC) and other online scams.
The international agency informed that the operation was conducted with the help and on-the-ground operational support of several infosec companies like Group-IB, Interpol and Uppsala Security. Their efforts helped in making three arrests in Cameroon related to an online scam involving the fake sale of artwork valued at $850,000.
Group-IB, that previously collaborated with Interpol on operations, gathered and communicated more than 1,000 indicators from its threat intelligence.
"Collaboration and intelligence sharing should be at the heart of cybersecurity operations, and Group-IB stands ready to make a further contribution to this end, in line with our core strategic mission of fighting against cybercrime in all its forms," Group-IB CEO Dmitry Volkov stated on Friday.
Information gathered by Group-IB and other private partners like Trend Micro, Kaspersky, and Coinbase aided in formulating some 150 Interpol analytical reports with data containing ‘intel on cyber threats’ from different countries.
Details in the report included:
- 3,786 malicious command and control servers
- 14,134 victim IPs linked to data stealer cases
- 1,415 phishing links and domains
- 939 scam IPs
- More than 400 other malicious URLs, IPs and botnets.
The first phase of the operation was carried out between July 2022 and November 2022 and resulted in a number of investigations followed by operations against threat actors in the region.
The most recent arrests come after months of similar cybercrime activities across Africa as international law enforcement works to dismantle cybercrime networks that operate out of various African nations.
Over 100 people were detained last week, according to Interpol, throughout the EU and Africa. Cops also recovered assets worth more than € 2.15 million ($2.4 million) that belonged to the Black Axe organized crime and cybercrime group.
In July 2023, cops in Côte d'Ivoire confirmed to have arrested a suspect, who was apparently a ‘key figure’ of cybercrime group – OPER1ER – responsible for defrauding banks and financial firms across 15 countries.
Interpol in a statement reported that the cybercrime group has defrauded the firms of a sum between $11 million to $30 million, with their targets spreading across Africa, Asia and Latin America.