Terror Financing

September 2025 saw a massive increase in deepfakes and Telegram scams. North Korean hackers have been targeting crypto leaders and high-asset investors, altering their focus away from the usual targets of large institutions.

In Nigeria’s northeast, a silent financial shift is taking place. While headlines focus on the violence of Boko Haram and offshoot ISWAP’s territorial gains, the group’s financial architecture is undergoing a quieter transformation. This financial shift will move the groups off the banking grid, allowing them to move funds, reward fighters and sustain control over entire communities via the blockchain.

A growing trend in the Web3 landscape involves fundraising through Instant Community Monetization (ICM). Projects are rapidly developed using AI-powered coding tools (e.g., Cursor), then deployed and publicised on social platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Visibility is often amplified by tagging platforms such as @launchcoin, which may automatically create tokens tied to the project.

The recent decision by Lebanon’s central bank to prohibit all interactions with Al-Qard-Al-Hassan, the financial arm of Hezbollah, marks a significant regulatory milestone. While the move tightens the net on Hezbollah’s presence in formal finance, it is unfortunately unlikely to slow the group down. In fact it’s likely to push the group further in their acceleration which is already in motion, towards a deep reliance on crypto-currency.

As Web3 ecosystems continue to expand globally, they are also growing as prime targets for covert operations - particularly from North Korean operatives posing as remote developers. Recent investigations have uncovered a disturbing trend: state-backed North Korean IT and Web3 workers infiltrating crypto companies by faking their identities, passing interviews with falsified credentials, siphoning earnings back to the regime as well as critical information about Western Web3 projects.

Proliferation Financing (PF) refers to the act of providing financial support for the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)

Afghanistan’s financial landscape has been in turmoil since the Taliban’s takeover in August 2021, with economic sanctions, frozen reserves, and the collapse of the U.S.-backed government pushing the nation further and further into crisis.

Recent years have demonstrated the growing reliance of cryptocurrency by terrorist organizations attempting to counter and avoid the traditional counterterrorism financing measures in place by regulatory services. The online nature of fundraising based on social media, such as telegram, has revealed the significant rise and role in digital currency to allow these terrorist groups, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic State Khorasan (ISK) , the Taliban, IS and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to fu

In 2023, NOMINIS (Xplorisk) identified 5,000 cryptocurrency wallets linked to terror financing, some of which had collectively transferred $100 million.

In recent years, Telegram has emerged as a significant platform for cryptocurrency-related criminal activities.

Cryptocurrency has become a powerful tool for donations, offering transparency, efficiency, and a global reach that has transformed philanthropic giving, project funding, and even political campaigns.