FortiGuard Labs and INTERPOL to combat cybercrime in Africa

FortiGuard Labs recently provided evidentiary support to INTERPOL and African Member countries as part of the Africa Cyber Surge Operation (ASCO) to assist in the detection, investigation, and disruption of cybercrime through coordinated law enforcement activities utilizing INTERPOL platforms, tools, and channels in close collaboration with AFRIPOL.

The ACSO is a multinational cybercrime suppression operation in Africa that focuses on identifying cybercriminals and compromised infrastructure. The INTERPOL Cybercrime Directorate and the INTERPOL Support Program for the African Union (ISPA) worked together with AFRIPOL and 27 INTERPOL member countries to leverage this intelligence and combat the growing threat of cybercrime on the African continent.

The successful Cyber Surge operation and knowledge transfer to multiple African law enforcement agencies is the result of ongoing threat information sharing and trusted cooperation between INTERPOL, FortiGuard Labs, and other INTERPOL private partners.

Over a six-month period, FortiGuard Labs provided actionable threat intelligence in the form of botnet, command and control (C2), and malware infrastructure research, including C2 and malware and botnet victims located on the African continent. 

“The Africa Cyber Surge Operation, launched in July 2022, has brought together law enforcement officials from 27 countries, working together for almost four months on actionable intelligence provided by INTERPOL private partners,” Craig Jones, Director of the Cybercrime Directorate with INTERPOL comments. “This intelligence focused on opportunities to prevent, detect, investigate and disrupt cybercrime through coordinated LE activities utilizing INTERPOL platforms, tools, and channels. This operation focused both on cybercriminals and compromised network infrastructure in Africa, allowing member countries to identify more than 1,000 malicious IP addresses, dark web markets, and individual threat actors, enhancing cooperation between INTERPOL, AFRIPOL and the member countries, and contributing to connecting policing for a safer world.”

“The Africa Cyber Surge Operation is a shining example of how shared threat intelligence on threat actors and joint operations across trusted partners can increase the cyber resilience of an entire region,” highlights Derek Manky, Chief Security Strategist & VP Global Threat Intelligence, FortiGuard Labs. “It also shows how valuable cybersecurity training and education is to help close the cyber skills gap and effectively disrupt cybercrime at scale. We will continue to work with our private and public sector partners such as INTERPOL around the world to help make our digital world a safer place.”

FortiGuard Labs has been informing and protecting customers, partners, and governments all over the world for over a decade. Its mission as a threat intelligence leader is to provide the best threat intelligence to protect customers from malicious activity and sophisticated cyberattacks. The team is made up of some of the industry’s most knowledgeable threat hunters, researchers, analysts, engineers, and data scientists who work in dedicated threat research labs all over the world.

Since 2015, Fortinet has been an active member of the Global Cybercrime Expert Group and a trusted partner of INTERPOL, and in 2018, it became an INTERPOL Gateway partner. This ongoing collaboration has resulted in improved threat intelligence standards and protocols throughout the industry, as well as significant global cybercriminal takedowns.

In addition to INTERPOL, FortiGuard Labs is committed to partnership and cooperation with global law enforcement, government organizations, and industry organizations. Some of the global partnerships include being a founding member and regular contributor of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Centre for Cybersecurity as part of its Partnership Against Cybercrime (PAC), serving as a long-standing member of the NATO Industry Cyber Partnership (NICP), contributing to the development of STIX/TAXII protocols with MITRE & OASIS, being an official Research Partner with MITRE Engenuity’s Center for Threat-Informed Defense (Center), co-founding the Cyber Threat Alliance (CTA), working in partnership with the computer incident response organization FIRST, and more.