NPF and INTERPOL arrest 11 allegedly inolved in BEC attacks

A coordinated law enforcement operation which comprised the Nigerian police force and INTERPOL has brought about the arrest of 11 members of an alleged Nigerian cybercrime gang notorious for perpetrating business email compromise (BEC) attacks noted to have defrauded more than 50,000 victims in recent years.

The arrest was possible due to a ten-day investigation named Operation Falcon II which was a joint taskforce involving Interpol and the Nigerian police

Cybersecurity firms Group-IB and Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42, both of which shared information on the threat actors and their infrastructure, said six of the 11 suspects are believed to be a part of a prolific group of Nigerian cyber actors known as SilverTerrier (aka TMT). SilverTerrier has been linked to 540 distinct clusters of activity to date.

BEC attacks, which began to gain dominance in 2013, are sophisticated scams that target legitimate business email accounts through social engineering schemes to infiltrate corporate networks and subsequently leverage their access to initiate or redirect the transfer of business funds to attacker-controlled bank accounts for personal gain.

Dolupo Balogun

Written by BoomRadioNG