IRANIAN MABNA HACKERS

Conspiracy to Commit Computer Intrusions; Conspiracy to Commit Wire Fraud; Computer Fraud–Unauthorized Access for Private Financial Gain; Wire Fraud; Aggravated Identity Theft Caution: On February 7, 2018, a grand jury sitting in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, indicted nine Iranian nationals for their alleged involvement in computer intrusion, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft offenses. As alleged in the indictment, the men were involved in a scheme to obtain unauthorized access to computer systems, steal proprietary data from those systems, and sell that stolen data to Iranian customers, including the Iranian government and Iranian universities.

Each individual was a leader, contractor, associate, hacker for hire, or affiliate of the Mabna Institute, a private government contractor based in the Islamic Republic of Iran that performed this work for the Iranian government, at the behest of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Victims of the scheme included approximately 144 universities in the United States, 176 foreign universities in 21 countries, five federal and state government agencies in the United States, 36 private companies in the United States, 11 foreign private companies, and two international non-governmental organizations.