Amsterdam, 07.11.2022 — Group-IB has today issued a new report, “OPERA1ER. Playing God without permission,” in collaboration withthe researchers from Orange CERT Coordination Center. The report takes a deep dive into financially motivated attacks of the prolific French-speaking threat actor, codenamed OPERA1ER. Despite relying solely on known “off-the-shelf” tools, the gang managed to carry out more than 30 successful attacks against banks, financial services, and telecommunication companies mainly located in Africa between 2018 and 2022. OPERA1ER is confirmed to have stolen at least $11 million, according to Group-IB’s estimates. One of OPERA1ER’s attacks involved a vast network of 400 mule accounts for fraudulent money withdrawals. Researchers from the Group-IB European Threat Intelligence Unit identified