Coeus: A Cyber Threat Intelligence Sharing Platform for Fraudulent Phone Numbers
Lawrence Muchilwa, Paula M. W. Musuva · 2023
Prior to the launch of MPESA, only 26.7% of Kenyans had access to formal financial services. However, by 2021 this had increased to 83.7% due to an increased reliance on mobile phones to access financial services. Fraudsters have noted this uptake and have found innovative ways of exploiting users of mobile money services. The aim of this study is to provide a platform for sharing threat intelligence on fraudulent phone numbers in order to combat mobile phone fraud. A web-based platform, named Coeus, is designed and implemented in this research. It provides a repository of verified fraudulent phone numbers that are reported and queried using a web interface while also allowing API-driven integration for data exchange with external systems. The system presented in this research provides a building block that can be extended by practitioners and the research community to progressively collect and build threat intelligence on fraudulent phone numbers.