Interpol and Afripol against hackers: how African authorities tracked down 14 hackers and prevented $40 million in losses

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A joint operation by Interpol and Afripol conducted in 25 African countries over four months resulted in 14 suspects being arrested and more than 20,000 suspicious networks linked to more than $40 million in losses.

The operation aims to curb cyber-extortion, phishing, corporate email scams and other online scams that have recently gained momentum in the region. The arrested individuals and neutralized networks are officially estimated to have caused losses of approximately $40 million.

In Cameroon, for example, three suspected cybercriminals were arrested in connection with a fraudulent sale of $850,000 worth of art. In addition, Cameroonian authorities blocked two dark web sites.

The police relied on information from their private partners, such as well-known companies Group-IB and Trend Micro, who shared reports with law enforcement. They contained information about:

• 3,786 malicious control servers;
• 14,134 victim IP addresses linked to data theft;
• 1,415 phishing links and domains;
• 939 fraudulent IPs;
• Over 400 other malicious URLs, IPs and botnets.

The first operation of Africa Cyber Surge, carried out between July and November 2022, included 10 arrests related to various scams and an alleged scam amounting to approximately $800,000, the closure of an Eritrean darknet marketplace trading in hacker tools, and "actions taken against more than 200,000 pieces of malicious infrastructure that have contributed to cybercrime in Africa,” Singapore-based Group-IB said in a statement.

This operation was an important step in the fight against cybercrime in Africa, and its success underlined the importance of international cooperation in this area.