US Charges 17 Iranians With Hacking Hundreds of Universities and Government Agencies

Key points

• A 14-count superseding federal indictment charges 17 individuals connected to the Mabna Institute, an Iranian company founded in 2013.
• The defendants allegedly broke into email accounts belonging to roughly 8,000 professors at 144 US universities and 178 institutions in 21 other countries.
• More than 31 terabytes of academic research and intellectual property were stolen across engineering, medicine, and technology fields.
• The US Department of Justice says the operation served Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military that the US designates as a foreign terrorist organisation.
• The State Department's Rewards for Justice programme is offering up to $10 million for information leading to the arrest of five named defendants.

A federal grand jury has charged 17 Iranian nationals with running a years-long campaign to break into university email systems, steal research, and sell it inside Iran. The indictment, filed in the Southern District of New York, names the Mabna Institute as the vehicle for the scheme.

What did the Mabna Institute actually do?

The institute targeted professors. Criminals sent phishing emails, meaning fake messages crafted to trick recipients into typing their login details into a fraudulent website, to more than 100,000 academics worldwide.

Roughly 8,000 professors fell for it. Once inside a professor's email account, the defendants downloaded research papers, grant documents, and raw data spanning engineering, medicine, and technology. That material, totalling more than 31 terabytes (roughly the equivalent of about 15 million books), was then sold through two affiliated Iranian companies called Megapaper and Gigapaper.

The Justice Department says the defendants acted on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), routing stolen Western science directly to the Iranian government and private buyers who could not access it through normal academic channels.

The institute was founded by Gholamreza Rafatnejad and Ehsan Mohammadi. Thirteen further associates are named in the indictment, including Behzad Mesri, who also faces separate allegations of a $6 million extortion attempt against HBO.

Who were the targets?

The 22 countries affected include the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel, Japan, and South Korea, among others.

Should academics and researchers be worried?

If you work at a university or research body, this case is a reminder that your email inbox is a target. Criminals treat academic credentials, meaning your university login details, as keys to vast libraries of research that countries under Western sanctions cannot buy openly.

Check whether your institution uses multi-factor authentication, which is a second confirmation step (like a code sent to your phone) that stops thieves from using a stolen password alone. If it does, make sure it is switched on for your account.

Be sceptical of any email asking you to click a link and sign in, even if it looks like a message from your library system or IT department. When in doubt, go directly to the website by typing the address yourself.

Common questions

What is the Rewards for Justice programme?

Rewards for Justice is a US State Department scheme that pays informants for tips leading to the arrest of people charged with crimes against US national security. In this case, bounties of up to $10 million each are on offer for five defendants: Mesri, Mojtaba Galekuhi, Arman Kahzadian, Keyvan Fayaz, and Saber Shahbazi Ballojeh.

Will these defendants actually face trial?

All 17 individuals are believed to be in Iran, which has no extradition treaty with the United States. Charges of this kind often serve as a diplomatic and reputational signal rather than an immediate path to prosecution, though indicted individuals can be arrested if they travel to cooperating countries.