Interpol-led cybercrime crackdown results in 574 arrests in 19 African nations, decrypts six ransomware variants — Operation Sentinel disrupts rings that caused

Interpol-led cybercrime crackdown results in 574 arrests in 19 African nations, decrypts six ransomware variants — Operation Sentinel disrupts rings that caused

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(Image credit: Getty Images) Share Share by: Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Flipboard Share this article Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google In an extensive coordinated effort led by Interpol, international law enforcement agencies have reportedly arrested 574 suspects in 19 countries across Africa involved in cybercrime operations. Operation Sentinel, conducted between October 27 and November 27, successfully recovered around $3 million by decrypting six ransomware variants and shutting down more than 6,000 malicious links. The top three cybercrimes identified during the crackdown included business email compromise (BEC), digital extortion, and ransomware.

The cases investigated during the operation were estimated to financial losses exceeding $21 million and included a long list of African nations including Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Djibouti, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, South Sudan, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

One of the biggest cases came from Senegal where authorities tracked a BEC attempt targeting a large petroleum company. Scammers had managed to take control of the internal email systems and impersonated executives to authorize a wire transfer amounting to $7.9 million. The Senegalese authorities managed to freeze the destination accounts and successfully halt the transfer before a withdrawal was made.

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