In a major announcement outlining one of the largest documented state-sponsored cyber intrusions in recent history, the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) has unsealed charges against 17 Iranian individuals linked to a coordinated, years-long hacking campaign that stole massive volumes of academic data and intellectual property from hundreds of American and global organizations.
According to official DoJ allegations, the hacking operation was run out of Tehran by the Mabna Institute, a front organization founded in 2013 specifically to illicitly access scientific resources outside Iran. From the campaign’s launch in 2013 through at least December 2017, the group systematically targeted digital networks across 144 U.S. universities, 42 U.S. private sector companies, five American federal and state government agencies, 178 international academic institutions, and 11 additional private companies based in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
Prosecutors confirm the hacking ring carried out most of its attacks on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), alongside other Iranian government bodies and domestic academic clients. The group specifically targeted the personal and professional accounts of more than 100,000 academics worldwide, successfully breaching approximately 8,000 university professor email accounts to steal research data. Over the course of the campaign, the hackers exfiltrated more than 31 terabytes of stolen information, with the total value of the taken intellectual property estimated at around $3.4 billion.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge James C. Barnacle, Jr. emphasized the severity of the coordinated intrusion, framing it as a direct threat to U.S. national security. “Backed by the IRGC, this operation reflects a broader, organised effort to target US institutions and global partners,” Barnacle said in an official statement released alongside the charges.
U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jamie McDonald reinforced that warning, noting that malicious cyber operations have now become a core tool of state power for adversarial nations, with far-reaching consequences for both American national security and economic stability.
In a parallel action to the unsealed charges, the DoJ announced a $10 million reward for any information that leads to the identification or location of five of the charged accused hackers, who remain at large. Nine of the 17 defendants facing charges were first indicted in a 2018 seven-count charging document, with eight new defendants added in the updated unsealed case.
The charges mark the latest high-profile U.S. government action cracking down on transnational state-sponsored cybercrime, highlighting the ongoing risk of large-scale intellectual property theft targeting academic and private sector research networks.