A four-month long operation involving international law enforcement officers led by Interpol has led to the arrest of 14 suspected cyber criminals across 25 African nations, including:
- Cameroon: 3 suspects arrested for $850,000 online art scam
- Nigeria: 1 individual arrested for defrauding a Gambian victim
- Mauritius: 2 money mules arrested linked to messaging platform scams
- Gambia: 185 malicious IP addresses taken down through proactive measures and partnerships
- Cameroon: 2 dark net sites shut down by authorities
- Kenya: 615 malware hosts taken down by authorities
The operation was code named African Cyber Surge II, after the 1st such operation back in 2022 when during that Op, 11 arrests were made and a dark web marketplace that sold hacking tools was shut down.
This recent operation disrupted over 20,000 cyber crime networks engaged in extortion, phishing, Business Email Compromise (BEC), and online scams, responsible for financial losses of over USD$40,000,000.
Malicious services taken down
The law enforcement teams also stopped the illegal activities operating across hundreds of IP addresses, including:
- 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
- Over 400 other malicious URLs, IPs, and botnets
“As digital systems, Information Communication Technologies and Artificial Intelligence grow in prominence, it is urgent that public and private actors work hand in hand to prevent these technologies from being exploited by cybercriminals. Coordinated operations such as Cyber Surge are necessary to disrupt criminal networks and build individual, organizational and society-wide levels of protection,”
AFRIPOL’s Acting Executive Director, Ambassador Jalel Chelba.