Nigerian princes to kings of malware: the next evolution in Nigerian cybercrime
Alexander Hinchliffe · Computer Fraud & Security · 2017
Nigeria has a reputation for harbouring a class of cyberthreat actors infamous for so-called ‘419’ scams. These come from Nigerian ‘princes’ and trick people into revealing financial details and making money transfers. While these exploits have resulted in real financial losses, it is often the case that these attacks – and indeed the attackers – are seen as amusing and are parodied as such, thus relegating Nigerian threat actors to a lower classification of cyber-criminal. However, this is far from reality and our image of Nigerian cyber-criminality needs to be reset.