The US Justice Department has charged seventeen Iranians with carrying out online attacks against academic and private organisations in the US, the UK and elsewhere on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as for “other Iranian government and university clients”.
Since 2013, the members of the Mabna Institute attacked the computer systems of 144 universities and 42 private-sector organisations in the US alone, the DOJ said.
Scientific resources
The IRGC-backed group has allegedly stolen more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property worth roughly $3.4 billion (£2.5bn), during a campaign that ran from 2013 to at least December 2017.
The Mabna Institute was allegedly formed in 2013 to steal access to non-Iranian scientific resources to benefit Iranian academic organisations.
