Eleven Arrested in Bust of Prolific Nigerian BEC Gang

Nigerian police have arrested 11 extra suspected users of a prolific business email compromise (BEC) gang that might have targeted hundreds of hundreds of organizations.

Interpol coordinated Procedure Falcon II with the Nigerian Law enforcement Power (NPF) more than 10 times in December 2021, owning sought input from other law enforcement forces throughout the world investigating BEC attacks by using its I-24/7 communications network.

These arrested are believed to be element of the Silver Terrier (aka TMT) group. One particular person experienced the domain credentials of 800,000 possible victims on his laptop computer, whilst another was monitoring on the net conversations involving 16 companies and their customers and diverting funds to TMT, Interpol claimed.

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A third is suspected of BEC attacks throughout West Africa, which includes Nigeria, Gambia and Ghana.

Any intelligence and proof gleaned from the procedure will be fed into Interpol’s Worldwide Financial Crime Taskforce (IGFCTF) to aid avert additional fraud.

“Operation Falcon II sends a clear message that cybercrime will have major repercussions for people included in company email compromise fraud, especially as we proceed our onslaught against the menace actors, identifying and analyzing each cyber trace they leave,” explained Interpol director of cybercrime, Craig Jones.

“Interpol is closing ranks on gangs like SilverTerrier. As investigations continue to unfold, we are building a very apparent photo of how such groups purpose and corrupt for monetary acquire. Many thanks to Procedure Falcon II we know wherever and whom to focus on next.”

The initially iteration of this anti-BEC campaign was operate in 2020 and resulted in the arrest of a few TMT suspects. The gang was believed to have compromised as quite a few as 500,000 target organizations by that time, in accordance to Group-IB, which was included in each functions.

“Group-IB’s APAC Cyber Investigations Staff has contributed to the present operation by sharing data on the risk actors, acquiring discovered the attackers’ infrastructure, gathered their digital traces and assembled information on their identities,” it defined in a statement.

“Group-IB has also expanded the investigation’s proof foundation by reverse-engineering the samples of malware applied by the cyber-criminals and conducting the electronic forensics evaluation of the data files contained on the units seized from the suspects.”