US Charges Iranian Hackers for HBO Breach, Data Theft, and $6M Bitcoin Ransom Demand

August 21 - According to Decrypt, the U.S. Department of Justice has indicted 17 hackers allegedly affiliated with Iran's Mabna Institute, charging them with a multi-year cyberattack campaign, including the 2017 intrusion into U.S. cable network HBO, where stolen data was leveraged to demand a ransom of approximately $6 million in Bitcoin. Prosecutors said the group conducted hacking operations on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian government clients, targeting hundreds of universities, corporations, and government agencies worldwide, stealing at least 31.5 TB of academic data and intellectual property. The group also targeted over 100,000 professor accounts, compromising roughly 8,000 accounts at 144 U.S. universities and 178 foreign universities. The U.S. State Department is offering rewards of up to $10 million for information leading to the location of five of the defendants.