Interpol has managed to arrest 14 suspected hackers from across Africa in an operation codenamed 'Africa Cyber Surge II'.
The business started in April 2023 and covered 25 African countries. Successfully stopped criminal networks involved in extortion, phishing, BEC and online fraud, responsible for over $40.000.000 in financial losses.
Along with the arrests, authorities have also taken down hundreds of malicious IP addresses that hosted malware. Specifically, her research Interpol includes the following:
- 3.786 malicious command and control servers
- 14.134 victim IPs linked to data theft cases
- 1.415 phishing links and domains
- 939 scam IPs
- Over 400 other malicious URLs, IPs and botnets
Interpol member countries in Africa used information they had and carried out the following arrests and actions:
- Cameroon: 3 suspects arrested in $850.000 online art scam.
- Nigeria: 1 person arrested for defrauding victim in Gambia.
- Mauritius: 2 money movers arrested linked to messaging platform scams.
- Gambia: 185 malicious IPs taken down.
- Cameroon: 2 darknet sites shut down.
- Kenya: 615 malware hosters shut down.
Interpol has been actively fighting cybercrime in recent months, disrupting several crime platforms.
Ten days ago, organization announced the closure of the notorious phishing-as-a-service (PhaaS) platform "16shop" and the arrest of its main operator.
In July 2023, Interpol's African branch (Afripol) arrested a suspect believed to be a key member of the cybercrime group OPERA1ER, responsible for at least 35 attacks between 2018 and 2022, resulting in over 11.000.000 in damages $.
The first "Africa Cyber Surge" operation took place in November 2022 and resulted in the arrest of 11 people, the takedown of a dark web marketplace selling hacking tools, and the vacation 200.000 points of infrastructure that helped spread malware, phishing, spam, scams and supported botnet activity.
