Cyber Threats
INTERPOL & Trend's Fight Against Cybercrime
Trend threat intelligence and training were crucial to the success of two major policing operations in 2024
Save to Folio
Cybercriminals are agile, determined, and increasingly well-resourced. The best way for global investigators to make an impact is by harnessing the significant threat intelligence and expertise of private partners like Trend Micro. Our partnership with INTERPOL speaks to the value of strategic alliances in protecting both the public and private sectors from cybercrime.
Through our research on ransomware and cybercriminal underground, we’ve identified evolving tactics, such as double extortion and increased targeting of critical infrastructure, which pose significant risks to global security. These insights not only inform our work with INTERPOL but also help guide the broader cybersecurity community in addressing these challenges proactively.
Trend’s massive global customer base across both commercial and consumer entities provides us with one of the broadest sets of threat intelligence in the industry and why global law enforcement views Trend as a key trusted advisor within the public/private partnership ecosystem used to combat cybercrime.
Sharing intelligence securely and collaboratively means that we can respond quickly and effectively to emerging threats. Trend Micro collaborated with INTERPOL this year on:
Operation Synergia II: dismantled over 22,000 malicious IP addresses/servers and resulted in the seizure of dozens of servers, laptops, mobile phones and hard disks, as well as 41 arrests.
Trend Micro threat intelligence played a pivotal role in disrupting the phishing, ransomware, and information stealer campaigns associated with this infrastructure by:
- Highlighting to INTERPOL all the malicious IP addresses associated with phishing that were detected by the Trend Micro global threat intelligence between January and March 2024.
- Identifying the malware types associated with malicious servers during this period, most notably, Backdoors and Trojan/Downloaders
Trend Micro also provided training to 20 investigators from countries participating in Operation Synergia II between July 22-26, 2024. This focused on advanced malware analysis such as:
- Surface Analysis (analyzing infection behavior, collecting related information using hash data, etc.)
- Dynamic Analysis (analysis based on monitoring systems, processes, and networks using sample malware)
- Memory Forensics (acquisition, analysis, and artifact collection of volatile data using specialized tools)
Operation Contender 2.0: A long-running INTERPOL operation focused on West Africa, which has already led to hundreds of cybercrime arrests and the seizure of over 2,000 financial accounts and devices, as well as criminal funds.
- Trend Micro provided actionable threat data on fraudulent activity to INTERPOL’s African Joint Operation against Cybercrime (AFJOC), which was leveraged to arrest a suspected prolific Nigerian scammer and their accomplice
As a key private sector partner, Trend contributes to annual INTERPOL threat assessment reports in regions including Africa, Asia and South-Pacific.
Trend also closely monitors cybercrime threats before and during specific global events, such as the Paris Olympics 2024, in order to support policing efforts and improve event safety and security.
As a trusted and valued INTERPOL partner, our threat intelligence experts regularly participate in INTERPOL initiatives, sharing knowledge through groups such as the Americas Working Group, ASP Working Group, Regional Expert Group on Malware Analysis (ASEAN), and more. This ongoing collaboration ensures law enforcement teams worldwide stay equipped to tackle evolving cyber threats.
Building on three decades of leadership in cybersecurity, Trend remains dedicated to making the world safe for exchanging digital information. Through our ongoing collaboration with INTERPOL and partnerships like this, our vision is to strengthen global cyber resilience by fostering collaboration across the global cybersecurity community.