US DOJ: Iranian Hackers Indicted for Breaching HBO and Stealing Data

According to Decrypt, the US Department of Justice has indicted 17 individuals allegedly affiliated with Iran's Mabna Institute for their involvement in a years-long cyberattack campaign, including the 2017 breach of US cable network HBO, where they demanded a ransom of approximately $6 million in Bitcoin after stealing data. Prosecutors described the group as conducting cyberattacks on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian government clients, targeting hundreds of universities, businesses, 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 and breached around 8,000 accounts across 144 US universities and 178 foreign institutions. The US State Department has offered a reward of up to $10 million for information leading to the capture of five of the defendants. The US Treasury has recently sanctioned multiple Iranian crypto exchanges and frozen over $131 million in crypto assets linked to Iran's central bank and the Revolutionary Guard.