A four-month operation by Interpol and Afripol led to the arrests of 14 suspected cybercriminals who ran various scams and networks.
With the help of Group-IB, a cybersecurity firm, the police have nabbed perpetrators behind 20,674 cyber networks that caused more than $40 million in financial losses. Also, they have taken down a couple of dark net websites and several URLs, domains, and IP addresses.
A Coordinated Campaign
Building on the success of last year’s Africa Cyber Surge operation, Interpol and Afripol have taken down massive cybercrime networks this week and arrested 14 suspects related to these networks. Spanning 25 African countries, the coordinated law enforcement operation led to the identification and seizing of malicious servers, domains, and other digital assets.
The perpetrators were said to be behind 20,674 cyber networks that caused financial losses of more than $40 million. More specifically, the police have nabbed networks comprising 3,786 C2 servers, 14,134 victim IP addresses used for data stealer operations, 1,415 phishing links and domains, 939 scam IP addresses, and over 400 malicious URLs, IPs, and botnets.
Further, there were two dark net websites taken down too. The police have arrested three suspects in Cameroon in connection with an online scam of fake selling of art worth $850,000, while another was arrested in Nigeria for defrauding a Gambian victim. Also two money mules linked to scams through messaging platforms were also nabbed.
Group-IB, a cybersecurity firm helping police in this operation, identified several domains, URLs, and server IP addresses used in these malicious operations. This is termed the biggest African cyber operation after the Africa Cyber Surge operation last year, which arrested 11 individuals and took over an Eritrean dark web market selling hacking tools.
