The Gambia - West Africa, has been
subject to recent cyber-criminal activity, often through telecommunication
cyber fraud, to which, every year a foreign national is publicly arrested and
convicted for criminal fraud. This has
raised regional suspicion and it is believed has placed other countries in West
Africa at risk of future cyber related crimes. The Gambia’s largest wireless carriers are facing the regular threat of the pirating of their networks and customer’s accounts using their own SIM cards in circulation with their subscribers. This information is being supplied for your situational awareness.
Publication
date: 26
September 2016
Handling
requirements: Traffic
light protocol (TLP) GREEN
Attribution/Threat
Actors: Foreign nationals/alleged collaborators in The Gambia
Actor
Type: Adversary capabilities have been assessed as Tier
II*
Potential Targets: The
Gambia and West Africa
Past Reporting: Red Sky Alliance: DOC-4296
*Practitioners with a greater depth of experience, with the ability to develop their own tools (from publicly known vulnerabilities).
The full attribution report has been published in its entirety in the Red Sky Alliance portal. For more information please contact the lab directly at 844-4-WAPACK, 603-606-1246, or feedback@wapacklabs.com.
About Wapack Labs
Wapack Labs, located in New Boston, NH is a Cyber Threat Analysis and Intelligence organization supporting the Red Sky Alliance, the FS-ISAC and individual organizations by offering expert level targeted intelligence analysis answering some of the hardest questions in Cyber. Wapack Labs’ engineers, researchers and analysts use deep analysis techniques and visualization to design and deliver transformational cyber-security analysis tools that fuse open source and proprietary information. The intelligence derived from these tools and techniques serve as the foundation of Wapack Labs’ information reporting to the cyber-security teams of its customers and industry partners located around the world.
On 30 November 2016, ahead of presidential elections the following day, The Gambian government blocked all Internet services as well as incoming and outgoing international phone calls. On 2 December 2016 President Yahya Jammeh reversed his decision to accept the election results that made Adama Barrow President, and declared new elections would be held due to “serious and unacceptable abnormalities.” A highly credible Wapack Lab source stated urging from foreign leaders prompted the swearing in of Barrow at The Gambian Embassy in neighboring Senegal. On 21 January 2017 Jammeh agreed to step down and leave the country; social media users reported messaging apps on at least one of the top 3 service providers in the country were unblocked. 
