US charges 17 Iranians over 'massive' cyber theft campaign
Many of the alleged cyber attacks were carried out for the Iranian government, the Department of Justice says.
The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has charged 17 Iranians in connection with a massive cyber theft campaign targeting American universities and private sector firms. The alleged perpetrators, members of the Iran-based Mabna Institute, have been accused of stealing over 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property worth approximately $3.4bn between 2013 and at least 2017.
The attacks, allegedly backed by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), were conducted on behalf of the IRGC and other Iranian government and university clients. The FBI's assistant director James C Barnacle Jr warned that such cyber attacks pose a serious threat to national security. The DoJ stated that Mabna had targeted the accounts of 100,000 academics worldwide, successfully compromising 8,000 professor email accounts at 144 US-based universities and 178 other academic institutions globally.
The campaign began in 2013 and continued until December 2017. In addition to academic institutions, Mabna is alleged to have targeted employee email accounts from at least five US federal and state government agencies, 42 US-based private companies, and 11 foreign companies in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and the UK. Nine of the 17 charged members had already been indicted in March 2018.
The DoJ is offering a $10m reward for information leading to the location of five of the accused hackers. US Attorney Jamie McDonald emphasized the growing role of cyber operations in national power and the dangerous impact these attacks have on US security and the economy.
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