Interpol, in collaboration with Nigeria Police Force, has arrested 11 members of a Nigerian cybercrime gang, potentially responsible for targeting as many as 50,000 victims in various scams in recent years.
\nAt least, six of the suspects belong to \u201cSilverTerrier,\u201d a syndicate accused of employing a range of malware variants in tens of thousands of financial scams dating back to, at least, 2014.
\nPalo Alto Networks\u2019 threat intelligence arm, Unit 42, which helped in the investigation, said the six Silver Terrier members have \u201csuccessfully avoided prosecution for the past half a decade.
\nThis, it said, was due to the complexities of mapping global victims beyond the flow of stolen funds back to the source of malicious network activity.
\nUnit 42, reports cyberscoop.com, also noted that rather than targeting \u201ceasily identifiable money mules or flashy Instagram influencers,\u201d the operation focused instead on the \u201ctechnical backbone of BEC operations\u201d.
\nIt focused on individuals who have the skills and knowledge to build and deploy the malware and domain infrastructure used in the schemes.
\nThe announcement, last Wednesday, comes two months after three members of the same group were arrested in Operation Falcon.
\nThe arrest of the three followed a year-long Interpol-led investigation into the prolific business email compromise (BEC) scams the group\u2019s members are alleged to have pulled off over the years.
\nAuthorities called this latest roundup Operation Falcon II.
\nThe arrests occurred between December 13 and 22, but it\u2019s not clear exactly where.
\nRead the full Interpol statement: \u201cThe Nigerian Police Force (NPF) has arrested 11 alleged members of a prolific cybercrime network as part of a national police operation coordinated with Interpol.
\n\u201cArrested by officers of the NPF Cybercrime Police Unit and Interpol\u2019s National Central Bureau (NCB) in Nigeria, many of the suspects are thought to be members of \u2018SilverTerrier\u2019, a network known for Business Email Compromise (BEC) scams which have harmed thousands of companies globally.
\n\u201cThe ten-day Operation Falcon II (13-22 December) saw 10 NFP officers deployed from the Abuja headquarters to Lagos and Asaba to arrest target suspects identified ahead of time with intelligence provided by Interpol.
\n\u201cField operations were preceded by an intelligence exchange and analysis phase, where Nigeria used Interpol\u2019s secure global police communications network, I-24\/7, to work with police forces across the world also investigating BEC scams linked to Nigeria.
\n\u201cThe Interpol General Secretariat supported field operations 24\/7, forensically extracting and analysing data contained in the laptops and mobile phones seized by NPF during the arrests.
\n\u201cThis preliminary analysis indicates that the suspects\u2019 collective involvement in BEC criminal schemes may be associated with more than 50,000 targets.
\n\u201cOne of the arrested suspects was in possession of more than 800,000 potential victim domain credentials on his laptop.
\n\u201cAnother suspect had been monitoring conversations between 16 companies and their clients and diverting funds to \u2018SilverTerrier\u2019 whenever company transactions were about to be made.
\n\u201cAnother individual was suspected of taking part in BEC crime across a wide range of West African countries, including Gambia, Ghana and Nigeria.
\n\u201cBy alerting Nigeria to this serious cybercrime threat, Interpol enabled me to give the order to hunt down these globally active criminals nationwide, flushing them out no matter where they tried to hide in my country,\u201d Head of NCB Abuja and INTERPOL Vice President for Africa,Assistant Inspector General of Police Garba Baba Umar, said.
\n\u201cThe outstanding results of Operation Falcon II have served to disrupt this dangerous cyber gang and protect Nigerian citizens from further attack.
\n\u201cI encourage fellow African countries to also work with Interpol in ridding our continent of cybercrime to make the cyber world a safer place,\u201d Umar added.
\n\u201cWith BEC fraud having both a cyber and a financial element, Operation Falcon II saw financial \u2018pathfinder countries\u2019 belonging to Interpol\u2019s Global Financial Crime Taskforce (IGFCTF) \u2013 including Nigeria \u2013 work together on cross-border financial investigations linked to the operation.
\n\u201cThe IGFCTF is now coordinating further action against \u2018SilverTerrier\u2019 bank accounts and sharing intelligence on the domain credentials of potential victims with member countries to prevent further fraud.
\n\u201cOperation Falcon II sends a clear message that cybercrime will have serious repercussions for those involved in business email compromise fraud, particularly as we continue our onslaught against the threat actors, identifying and analysing every cyber trace they leave,\u201d said Interpol\u2019s Director of Cybercrime, Craig Jones.
\n\u201cINTERPOL is closing ranks on gangs like \u2018SilverTerrier\u2019; as investigations continue to unfold, we are building a very clear picture of how such groups function and corrupt for financial gain. Thanks to Operation Falcon II we know where and whom to target next,\u201d Jonesadded.
\n\u201cLed by Interpol\u2019s Cybercrime Directorate in Singapore, Operation Falcon II was a cooperative effort involving IGFCTF, Nigerian law enforcement agencies, a range of Interpol expert teams and vital private partners Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 and Group-IB\u2019s APAC Cyber Investigations Team.
\n\u201cThrough Interpol\u2019s Gateway initiative, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 and Group-IB have contributed to investigations by sharing information on \u2018SilverTerrier\u2019 threat actors, and analysing data to situate the group\u2019s structure within the broader organized crime syndicate. They also provided key technical expertise consultancy to support the Interpol teams.
\n\u201cGateway boosts law enforcement and private industry partnerships to generate threat data from multiple sources and enable police authorities to prevent and investigate attacks in a timely manner.
\n\u201cThe operation was developed as part of efforts to support joint operations in Africa with funding by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (UK). Interpol extends its thanks for this support.
\n\u201cAt a time of increased threat, members of the public, businesses and organizations are reminded to protect themselves from online scams by following the advice featured in Interpol\u2019s #JustOneClick, #WashYourCyberHands, #OnlineCrimeIsRealCrime and #BECareful campaigns.
\n\u201cBEC remains \u201cone of the most financially damaging online crimes,\u201d according to the FBI.
\n\u201cIn 2020 the FBI received more than 19,000 BEC and email account compromise complaints, costing victims as much as $1.86billion.
\n\u201cBEC refers to a scam where a company employee authorized to make payments on behalf of the company is tricked into authorizing phony payments or money transfers into accounts controlled by the attacker, via spoofed or legitimate email, or over the phone\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Interpol, in collaboration with Nigeria Police Force, has arrested 11 members of a Nigerian cybercrime gang, potentially responsible for targeting as many as 50,000 victims in various scams in recent years. At least, six of the suspects belong to \u201cSilverTerrier,\u201d a syndicate accused of employing a range of malware variants in tens of thousands of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":235849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76],"tags":[688],"class_list":["post-285394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-front-pix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=285394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":285395,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285394\/revisions\/285395"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/235849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=285394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=285394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetidenewsonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=285394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}