Iranian hackers stole secrets in ‘massive’ attack on universities
THE Iranian government stole secrets from British universities by hacking into the computers of thousands of academics, it emerged yesterday.
Hackers working for the notorious Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) are accused of masterminding “one of the largest state-sponsored” cyber attacks, US and UK authorities say.
Court papers made public yesterday identified nine Iranians who are accused of conducting “massive, coordinated intrusions” that targeted more than 320 universities in 21 countries, as well as dozens of businesses and even the United Nations.
A Whitehall source told The Daily Telegraph that around 20 British universities were affected and said “intellectual property” was the target.
It is unclear exactly when UK institutions were hacked or whether individual academics were picked out specifically for the attacks.
The Iranians are accused of working for the Mabna Institute, an Iran-based company, which in turn was under orders from the regime’s revolutionary guard, according to the US indictment.
The IRGC, founded on the orders of Ayatollah Khomeini to defend the Islamic revolution, has previously been accused of stealing information to further develop its own weaponry.
Intelligence sources declined to say if nuclear, chemical and biological secrets had been stolen from academics since 2013 when the hacking is said to have begun.
The New York court indictment claims the damage to US universities alone totalled £2.4billion and that 31.5 terabytes of “academic data and intellectual property from compromised universities was stolen”, making it one of the biggest cyber crimes in history.
The National Cyber Security Centre, a branch of GCHQ set up to protect the UK from cyber crime, assessed with “high confidence” that the Mabna Institute was “almost certainly responsible” for the campaign targeting universities in the UK, US and other Western nations.
Another employee of the Mabna Institute had previously been indicted in November 2017 for hacking into the US television network HBO and stealing unaired episodes of Game of Thrones and threatening to release them unless a ransom was paid.
Yesterday, Rod Rosenstein, the US deputy attorney general, said: “These nine Iranian nationals allegedly stole more than 31 terabytes of documents and data from more than 140 American universities, 30 American companies, five American government agencies, and also more than 176 universities in 21 foreign countries.
“For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the IRGC.”
The UK Government backed the action taken by Washington and revealed that British universities were among those targeted.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon, the Foreign Office minister for cyber, said: “The UK Government judges that the Mabna Institute based in Iran was responsible for a hacking campaign targeting universities around the world.
‘For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and the IRGC’
“By stealing intellectual property from universities, these hackers attempted to make money and gain technological advantage at our expense.”
The Trump administration announced sanctions against Iran in response to the charges. The defendants are effectively prevented from travelling to more than 100 countries without fear of possible arrest and extradition to the US. The sanctions prevent financial transactions that could come under US jurisdiction.
Lord Ahmad added: “Mabna Institute employees can no longer travel freely, curtailing their career prospects outside of Iran.”
The nine charged in the US are: Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38; Ehsan Mohammadi, 37; Abdollah Karima, aka Vahid Karima, 39; Mostafa Sadeghi, 28; Seyed Ali Mirkarimi, 34; Mohammed Reza Sabahi, 26; Roozbeh Sabahi, 24; Abuzar Gohari Moqadam, 37; and Sajjad Tahmasebi, 30.
They are all citizens and residents of Iran and, because the US has no extradition agreement with the state, they are unlikely to ever stand trial.