Interpol introduced it arrested 41 people and brought down 1,037 servers and infrastructure working on 22,000 IP addresses facilitating cybercrime in a global legislation enforcement motion titled Operation Synergia II.
The operation passed off between April and August 2024, spanning 95 nations and leading to 41 arrests of these linked to varied crimes, together with ransomware, phishing, and knowledge stealers.
Interpol mentioned its enforcement motion was backed by intelligence supplied by non-public cybersecurity companies like Group-IB, Kaspersky, Pattern Micro, and Crew Cymru, resulting in the identification of over 30,000 suspicious IP addresses.
Finally, roughly 76% of these had been taken down, 59 servers had been seized, and 43 digital gadgets had been confiscated, which can be examined to retrieve further proof.
Along with the 41 people who had been arrested, the authorities are additionally investigating one other 65 individuals suspected of associating with illicit actions.
Location-based highlights from the operation are given beneath:
- Hong Kong (China): Police took down greater than 1,037 servers linked to malicious companies.
- Mongolia: Performed 21 home searches, seized a server, and recognized 93 people related to unlawful cyber actions.
- Macau (China): Police took 291 servers offline.
- Madagascar: Authorities recognized 11 people with hyperlinks to malicious servers and seized 11 digital gadgets for investigation.
- Estonia: Police seized over 80GB of server knowledge, working with INTERPOL to research knowledge associated to phishing and banking malware.
“The worldwide nature of cybercrime requires a world response which is clear by the help member nations supplied to Operation Synergia II. Collectively, we have not solely dismantled malicious infrastructure but additionally prevented tons of of hundreds of potential victims from falling prey to cybercrime,” mentioned Neal Jetton, Interpol’s Director of the Cybercrime Directorate
The legislation enforcement company says that generative AI is getting used to boost phishing operations, and knowledge stealers are more and more used as precursors to ransomware assaults, with using data stealers rising by 70% final yr.
Interpol’s announcement concludes that phishing, ransomware, and info-stealer malware are at present among the many most important cyber threats, making this motion a precedence.