US charges 9 Iranians for global cyber attacks
FUGITIVES HACKED INTO UNIVERSITIES, PARTS OF AMERICAN GOVERNMENT
The United States yesterday announced criminal charges and sanctions against nine Iranians and an Iranian company for hacking into hundreds of universities worldwide, dozens of companies and parts of the US government, including its main energy regulator, on behalf of Tehran’s government.
The cyber attacks, beginning in at least 2013, pilfered more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from 144 US universities and 176 universities in 21 other countries, the US Department of Justice said, describing the conspiracy as one of the largest state-sponsored hacking sprees prosecuted.
The US Treasury Department said that it was placing sanctions on the nine accused individuals
and the Mabna Institute, a company described by US prosecutors as designed to help Iranian research organisations steal information.
“These defendants are now fugitives of justice,” US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said at a press conference. He said they may face extradition in more than 100 countries if they travel outside of Iran.
The hackers were not accused of being directly employed by Iran’s government. They were instead charged with criminal conduct waged primarily through the Mabna Institute on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the elite military force assigned to defend Iran’s theocracy from internal and external threats.
The nine Iranians charged by the Trump administration yesterday hacked the computer systems of about 320 universities in the US and abroad to steal expensive science and engineering research that was then used or sold for profit, US prosecutors said.
The hackers also are accused of breaking into the networks of dozens of government organisations, such as the Department of Labour, the United Nations and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and companies, including law firms and biotechnology corporations. “By bringing these criminal charges, we reinforce the norm that most of the civilized world accepts: nation-states should not steal intellectual property for the purpose of giving domestic industries an advantage,” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said in announcing the charges.
The Treasury Department also targeted the Mabna Institute and 10 Iranians — the nine defendants and one charged in a separate case last year — for sanctions that will bar them from doing business in the US.
The defendants are unlikely to ever be prosecuted in a US courtroom since there’s no extradition treaty with Iran. But the grand jury indictment is part of the US government’s ‘name and shame’ strategy to publicly identify foreign hackers, block them from travelling and put their countries on notice.
“People travel. They take vacations, they make plans with their families,” said FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich. “Having your name, face and description on a ‘wanted’ poster makes moving freely much more difficult.”