An INTERPOL-led operation has led to the arrest of 1,006 suspects throughout 19 African nations and the takedown of 134,089 malicious infrastructures and networks as a part of a coordinated effort to disrupt cybercrime within the continent.
Dubbed Serengeti, the regulation enforcement train befell between September 2 and October 31, 2024, and focused criminals behind ransomware, enterprise e mail compromise (BEC), digital extortion, and on-line scams.
The taking part nations within the operation have been Algeria, Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
These actions, which ranged from on-line bank card fraud and Ponzi schemes to funding and multi-level advertising and marketing scams, victimized greater than 35,000 individuals, resulting in monetary losses almost amounting to $193 million the world over.
In reference to the $6 million on-line Ponzi scheme, authorities arrested eight individuals, together with 5 Chinese language nationals, within the West African nation of Senegal. A search of their residences uncovered 900 SIM playing cards, $11,000 in money, telephones, laptops, and copies of ID playing cards related to 1,811 victims.
Additionally dismantled by authorities was a digital on line casino in Luanda that focused Brazilian and Nigerian gamblers with the intention of defrauding them by a web-based platform and engaging them with a proportion of winnings to members who recruited new subscribers.
“From multi-level marketing scams to credit card fraud on an industrial scale, the increasing volume and sophistication of cybercrime attacks is of serious concern,” Valdecy Urquiza, Secretary Common of INTERPOL, stated in an announcement.
“Operation Serengeti shows what we can achieve by working together, and these arrests alone will save countless potential future victims from real personal and financial pain. We know that this is just the tip of the iceberg, which is why we will continue targeting these criminal groups worldwide.”
Group-IB, which was a personal sector associate within the operation, stated it additionally recognized roughly 10,000 distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) assaults originating from Africa-based servers over the previous 12 months, over 3,000 phishing domains hosted within the area, and particulars about actors who’ve leaked information on darkish net boards.
Russian cybersecurity vendor Kaspersky stated it contributed to the operation by “sharing information on threat actors, data on ransomware attacks and malware targeting the region, as well as up-to-date indicators of compromise (IoCs) for malicious infrastructure across Africa.”
