Interpol’s ‘Africa Cyber Surge II’ operation, initiated in April 2023, has led to the apprehension of 14 suspected cybercriminals in a joint international law enforcement effort spanning 25 African countries. This four-month operation successfully dismantled over 20,000 cybercrime networks involved in various illicit activities such as extortion, phishing, BEC, and online scams, which collectively resulted in financial losses exceeding $40 million. Alongside the arrests, authorities also dismantled numerous malicious IP addresses used for hosting malware and distributing dangerous software.
Interpol’s investigation, conducted in collaboration with its partners, informed the strategy for the operation and yielded substantial insights into cybercriminal activity. The investigation identified key statistics, including 3,786 malicious command and control servers, 14,134 victim IPs linked to data-stealing incidents, 1,415 phishing links and domains, 939 scam IPs, and more than 400 other malicious URLs, IPs, and botnets. Group-IB, an Interpol partner specializing in cybercrime intelligence, provided over a thousand indicators related to malicious infrastructure in the African region.
The operation’s highlights include the arrest of suspects involved in various cybercrimes, such as a Cameroon-based online art scam resulting in $850,000, the apprehension of an individual in Nigeria for defrauding a Gambian victim, and the arrest of two money mules in Mauritius linked to messaging platform scams. Furthermore, the operation led to the proactive takedown of 185 malicious IPs in Gambia through collaborations, shutting down two darknet sites in Cameroon, and removing 615 malware hosters in Kenya.Interpol has been
actively combatting cybercrime through a series of operations, including the recent shutdown of the ’16shop’ phishing-as-a-service platform and the arrest of its main operator. Additionally, in July 2023, Interpol’s African branch detained a suspected key member of the OPERA1ER cybercrime group, responsible for multiple attacks causing damages exceeding $11 million between 2018 and 2022. This operation builds upon the success of the first ‘Africa Cyber Surge’ in 2022, resulting in the arrest of 11 individuals, dismantling a darknet market, and disrupting extensive infrastructure supporting cybercriminal activities.
