201 Arrested in Crackdown on Cybercrime in Middle East, North Africa

A SecurityWeek report details a 13-country crackdown on phishing and malware threats in the Middle East and North Africa, named Operation Ramz. A total of 201 individuals were arrested, with 382 additional suspects identified, and 53 servers seized across participating jurisdictions. The operation identified 3,867 victims and involved law enforcement in Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Tunisia, and the UAE, running from October 2025 to 28 February 2026.

In Algeria, authorities shut down a phishing-as-a-service website and arrested one suspect, while in Jordan two individuals were arrested for orchestrating financial fraud scams. According to Interpol, multiple private partners supported the effort, including Group-IB, Kaspersky, the Shadowserver Foundation, Team Cymru, and TrendAI. The report quotes Team Cymru CEO Joe Sander emphasising that cybercrime is borderless and that Ramz represents a borderless, collaborative response.