Feds have hit 17 Iranians with criminal charges for allegedly conducting a years-long campaign of cyber attacks — including trying to extort HBO for $6 million in bitcoin.
The U.S. Department of Justice said Tuesday that the 17 individuals were working with the Mabna Institute, which carried out hacking campaigns on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian government and university clients.
Hundreds of U.S. and international universities, dozens of companies, and at least five state and federal government agencies were targeted in the campaign.
Part of the indictment mentioned Behzad Mesri, who was previously charged with hacking entertainment giant Home Box Office — HBO — and stealing proprietary data. The crime then saw Mesri try and extort approximately $6 million worth of Bitcoin.
Prosecutors added that five other defendants — Saeid Houshyar, Manouchehr Hashemloo, Keyvan Fayaz, Saber Shahbazi Ballojeh, and Arman Kahzadian — were directly involved in the hack.
The State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is now offering up to $10 million for information on the location of the defendants.
“Today’s charges, which include eight additional defendants, reveal the broader network allegedly behind a sweeping, state-sponsored campaign to steal research and intellectual property from American universities, businesses, and government institutions,” U.S. Attorney Jamie McDonald for the Southern District of New York said in a statement.
Founded around 2013 by Gholamreza Rafatnejad and Ehsan Mohammadi, the Mabna Institute allegedly worked at the behest of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian clients.
The stolen research didn’t just go to Tehran’s intelligence services. Prosecutors say it was resold through two websites, Megapaper.ir and Gigapaper.ir, the latter renting out hijacked professor logins so Iranian customers could walk straight into foreign university libraries.
U.S. institutions had spent some $3.4 billion acquiring the material in the first place. Separate victims racked up more than $20 million cleaning up the breaches.
