US charges 17 in Iranian state-linked hacking campaign

The U.S. Department of Justice has unsealed fresh and expanded charges against 17 individuals allegedly linked to an Iranian company accused of orchestrating a wide-ranging cyber espionage campaign. The indictments, made public on Tuesday, detail years of hacking and data theft aimed at American universities, private companies, and government bodies.

The individuals are said to have worked with the Mabna Institute, a company the DOJ claims carried out hacking operations on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian state and academic clients. The campaign reportedly targeted hundreds of universities worldwide, dozens of U.S. companies, and at least five state and federal agencies.

A prior indictment from March 2018 had charged nine of the same individuals in connection with attacks on the U.S. Labor Department, the United Nations, and computer networks in Hawaii and Indiana. The new charges broaden the scope, revealing what the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Jamie McDonald, called a larger network behind a state-sponsored effort to steal research and intellectual property.

According to the DOJ, the Mabna Institute targeted more than 100,000 professor accounts globally between 2013 and 2017. The operation successfully breached roughly 8,000 email accounts belonging to academics at 144 U.S. universities and 178 institutions abroad.

The State Department's Rewards for Justice program has announced a $10 million reward for information leading to the location of several individuals named in the new charges. Iranian officials at the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and contact details for the Mabna Institute were not available.