Operation Nervone: Group-IB assists INTERPOL-led mission to detain key cybercrime suspect in Côte d’Ivoire

Group-IB, a global cybersecurity leader headquartered in Singapore, has assisted in the INTERPOL-led Operation Nervone, aimed at successfully disrupting the operations of a cybercriminal syndicate dubbed OPERA1ER by Group-IB (also known as NXSMS, DESKTOP-Group, and Common Raven as named by SWIFT ISAC) in French-speaking Africa. This initiative took place under the guises of the African Joint Operation against Cybercrime (AFJOC) and the INTERPOL Support Programme for the African Union (ISPA), in conjunction with AFRIPOL, the Direction de L’information et des Traces Technologiques (DITT), Group-IB and the Orange CERT Coordination Center (Orange-CERT-CC). Group-IB’s Threat Intelligence and High-Tech Crime Investigations units, which have tracked OPERA1ER since 2019, provided timely intelligence that uncovered the identity and potential location of a key member of the cybercriminal group, who was subsequently detained in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire.

Group-IB, which has a zero-tolerance policy to cybercrime, is a committed, long-standing private sector partner of INTERPOL, and the company is proud of its significant contribution to Operation Nervone. This successful initiative was preceded by the INTERPOL-led Operation Falcon I, Falcon II, and Delilah, which led to the arrests of more than a dozen individuals in Nigeria linked to the transnational phishing syndicate dubbed TMT.