DOJ charges 17 in Iran-backed cyber-theft scheme targeting universities and firms

The U.S. Department of Justice unsealed a sweeping indictment on Tuesday, August -18, 2026, charging 17 individuals linked to an Iranian hacking group with orchestrating a years-long cyber theft campaign targeting hundreds of universities, companies, and government agencies worldwide. The charges allege the defendants, working with the Iran-based Mabna Institute, stole terabytes of academic research and intellectual property on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other government clients.

Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York unveiled a 14-count superseding indictment, adding eight new defendants to a case that originally charged nine individuals in March 2018. The indictment alleges the hacking campaign began around 2013 and continued through at least December 2017. The group is accused of targeting more than 100,000 professor email accounts globally, successfully compromising roughly 8,000 accounts at 144 U.S. universities and 178 universities in other countries. The stolen academic data and intellectual property, exceeding 31 terabytes, included journals, theses, and dissertations across fields such as science, engineering, medicine, and...