The Bleeping Computer website disclosed that in April, Interpol launched a four-month law enforcement operation "Africa Cyber Surge II" across 25 African countries, arresting 14 cybercriminal suspects and destroying more than 20,000 blackmail sites. , phishing, BEC and online scams.
These mainly include 3786 malicious command and control servers, 14134 victim IPs related to data theft cases, 1415 phishing links and domains, 939 spoofing IPs, more than 400 other malicious URLs, IPs and botnets. At the same time, Interpol also removed hundreds of malicious IP addresses that hosted malware and helped distribute dangerous software. It is reported that the economic losses caused by these criminal networks exceeded 40 million US dollars.
It is worth noting that when Interpol gathers cybercrime intelligence from the African region, one of its partners, Group-IB, provides more than a thousand indicators related to malicious infrastructure on the African continent, including Domain names, URLs and server IP addresses for phishing and malware attacks have played a key role in several Interpol cybercrime campaigns in Africa.
The action achieved the following results:
Cameroon: Three suspects arrested in $850,000 online art scam.
Nigeria: 1 person arrested for defrauding a Gambian victim.
Mauritius: 2 "money mules" arrested in connection with information platform scams.
Gambia: 185 malicious IPs shut down through proactive measures and partnerships.
Cameroon: 2 darknet sites shut down.
Kenya: 615 malware hosts shut down.
Interpol cracks down on cybercrime in Africa
In November 2022, Interpol launched its first "Africa Cyber Surge II" operation, which resulted in the arrest of 11 people, the destruction of a darknet market selling hacking tools, and the destruction of 200,000 online businesses that helped spread malware, phishing, Spam, scams, and infrastructure sites that support botnet activity.
Interpol has been aggressively fighting cybercrime, disrupting millions of cyberattacks and taking down several widely used criminal platforms. Ten days earlier, Interpol had announced the shutdown of the notorious '16shop' phishing-as-a-service (Phaas) platform and the arrest of its main operator.
Additionally, in July 2023, Interpol's African branch (Afripol) arrested a suspect believed to be a key member of the OPERA1ER cybercrime gang, which carried out at least 35 cyberattacks between 2018 and 2022 , causing economic losses of more than 11 million US dollars.