Our cyber operations

We support national police in tactical deployments in the field, aimed at breaking up the criminal networks behind different types of cybercrime and cyber-enabled crimes.

Online fraud scams

In a joint operation between INTERPOL and the Nigerian Economic and Financial Crime Commission in 2016, police arrested the ringleader of an international criminal network behind thousands of online frauds totaling more than USD 60 million. The network, headed by a Nigerian national known as ‘Mike’ and involving at least 40 individuals across Nigeria, Malaysia and South Africa, targeted hundreds of victims worldwide with various business e-mail compromise fraud schemes. 

Cyber surges

Our ‘cyber surge’ operations bring investigators together to act on threat information developed with private sector partners. These have included ASEAN (Southeast Asia) in 2017 and the Americas.

ASEAN

This operation combined the expertise of police and private sector to identify command and control servers spreading various types of malware; it led to the discovery of nearly 270 compromised websites, including government portals. A number of phishing website operators were also identified, including one with links to Nigeria. One criminal based in Indonesia selling phishing kits via the Darknet had posted YouTube videos showing customers how to use the illicit software.

Americas

Participating countries carried out on-the-ground action against cybercriminal infrastructures in the Americas region based on intelligence provided by INTERPOL. Investigations led to the identification of 26 affected government websites, six hacker groups and several individual hackers, and information on nearly 40 phishing and malware distribution cases concerning 3,700 active cyber threats.