Iranians Indicted for Hacking (Continued)

Iran has been hacking US Universities and other places.  Excuse me for not reacting to what we have known for several years since LinkedIn and others were hacked by the same folks.  See two stories on this, one from the Wall Street Journal, and the indictment itself.  Both are worth reading.  I will have more on this later this weekend, because there is much more to tell.  By the way, the WSJ article has pictures of the indicted individuals, which I thought was better than having just the names listed.  People in the US may know these guys (yes, they are all guys).

All worked at Mabna Institute which we would have a hard time finding out anything about, since they don’t seem to be found on a website.  It was founded by two of the gentlemen charged, with the purpose of stealing intellectual property from Universities.  They targeted 100,000 professors and controlled 8,000 accounts. I guess they don’t need a website for that, but they do need two to sell the data through.

The guys did their work for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other government agencies in Iran.  They hacked 144 U.S. Universitities, and 176 other Universities  in 21 different countries, 47 Companies (foreign and domestic to the U.S.), several U.S. government organizations, the UN and the UN Children’s Fund.  In an accompanying speech, Rod Rosenstein says, “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,” said Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.  “For many of these intrusions, the defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian government and, specifically, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.  The Department of Justice will aggressively investigate and prosecute hostile actors who attempt to profit from America’s ideas by infiltrating our computer systems and stealing intellectual property.  This case is important because it will disrupt the defendants’ hacking operations and deter similar crimes.”   We would have to wonder about that last part.

The Justice Department believes that there is evidence to prosecute this crime, which is something at least.  They can also be charged with conspiracy and any number of lesser offenses of hacking and stealing information.  It would nice to know what they were after.  These 8000 accounts of professors must have been related to some academic areas that would prove interesting reading.