According to our sources, the agency used the funds to buy equipment and conduct works in the framework of a programme to secure the Cameroonian cyberspace.
Indeed, due to Cameroonians’ quick adoption of the information and communication technologies over the past years, the country is increasingly exposed to cyber criminality which causes important financial losses for individuals, companies and public administration.
According to ANTIC, among cybercriminal activities identified in Cameroon, there is scamming (fraudulent attempts to obtain money or something of value), skimming (illegally collecting of data from the magnetic stripe of a credit, debit or ATM card), Simbox frauds (used to bypass international call rates and be charged for local calls), Web defacement (unauthorized changes made to someone’s homepage) and spoofing (attempts to gain unauthorized access to someone’s system), etc.
To illustrate the threat, on August 2017, Minette Libom Li Likeng, Cameroon’s minister of posts and telecommunication, told the 10 regions’ governors that the country has been the target of 12,800 cyberattacks since 2013.
Brice R. Mbodiam