Sharing AI-Powered Cybercrime Intelligence

S2W Contributes to INTERPOL’s

"African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026"

- Report analyzes 2025 cybercrime trends across 36 African member countries…reported losses more than doubled year over year

- S2W identifies the scale and characteristics of data traded on dark web forums through big data collection and analysis

- “We will continue advancing our AI capabilities to rapidly detect security threat signals and support the response to transnational crime”

S2W announced on August 12 that it contributed data and threat intelligence as a private sector partner to INTERPOL’s recently published "African Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2026," supporting the analysis of cybercrime trends across Africa.

The report was developed as part of the African Joint Operation against Cybercrime (AFJOC), under the funding and strategic support of the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). Drawing on survey data provided by law enforcement agencies across 36 African INTERPOL member countries, the report was produced through a comprehensive, multi-source intelligence synthesis process combining telemetry data and threat intelligence from global private sector and non-profit partners including S2W, Mastercard, Fortinet, the Shadowserver Foundation and TrendAI.

According to the report, cybercrime-related losses reported across Africa more than doubled from USD 192 million in 2024 to USD 484 million in 2025, while the number of identified victims increased from 35,000 to 87,000 over the same period. The report also found that 55 per cent of cybercrime cases in 2025 involved AI in some capacity. AI was used to automate phishing campaigns, generate deepfakes for impersonation and social engineering, and create synthetic identities for financial fraud, enabling criminal actors to operate with greater speed, scale, and sophistication.

As Korea’s sole partner in INTERPOL’s Gateway Initiative, S2W used its AI-powered big data collection and analysis capabilities to identify and classify African-origin content on dark web forums. S2W data provided to INTERPOL showed a 62 per cent year-over-year increase in such content. The data primarily consisted of identity documents, SIM card PINs, banking credentials and mobile money account details, much of which was traced to previous data breaches, phishing campaigns and compromised mobile applications.

Cyberthreats affecting Africa are not confined to the region, but are increasingly connected to transnational criminal networks operating across borders. The report describes West Africa as a nexus between African and global criminal ecosystems. Korea’s National Intelligence Service also disclosed in 2025 a case in which a Nigeria-based international drug trafficking organization used romance scams to recruit Koreans and others as drug couriers. As online scam tactics increasingly converge with other forms of crime such as drug trafficking and criminal networks expand across national borders, the importance of cross-border information sharing and public-private cooperation is also growing to enable the early identification and disruption of criminal infrastructure by combining law enforcement capabilities with private-sector data and technology.

Neal Jetton, Director of INTERPOL’s Cybercrime unit, said, “Cybercrime has emerged as one of the most significant criminal threats to the region. AI is automating every stage of a cyberattack from reconnaissance and phishing to extortion and evasion.” He added, “However, we see that when countries work together, cybercriminal infrastructure can be identified, disrupted and dismantled.”

Suh Sangduk, CEO of S2W, said, “S2W has focused on closely analyzing criminal activity in developing countries where cybersecurity infrastructure and institutional frameworks remain insufficient, leaving them relatively vulnerable to cyberattacks, and on providing high-quality intelligence that law enforcement agencies can put to practical use in addressing gaps in their response capabilities.” He added, “We will continue advancing our AI-powered global data collection and analysis capabilities to rapidly detect signals of security threats emerging around the world and support the response to transnational crime.”