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26 March 2018Patents

Nine charged with $3.4bn of IP theft from international establishments

Nine Iranians have been indicted for stealing more than 31 terabytes of academic data and IP, predominantly from US organisations.

The individuals all worked for Mabna Institute which, according to the US Department of Justice (DoJ), is an Iran-based company that has conducted a campaign of cyber intrusion into computer systems since 2013.

The group infiltrated 144 US universities; 176 other universities across 21 countries; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; the US State of Hawaii; the US State of Indiana; the United Nations; and the United Nations Children’s Fund.

The thefts took place between 2013 and December 2017 and targeted academic data and IP from university systems. During this time period, US universities spent approximately $3.4 billion to procure and access such data and IP.

According to the DoJ, many of the intrusions were conducted on behalf of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps—an Iranian entity responsible for gathering intelligence.

US deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein said that the DoJ will “aggressively investigate and prosecute” those that attempt to steal the US’s IP.

Geoffrey Berman, US attorney, added that this is one of the largest state-sponsored hacking campaigns ever prosecuted by the DoJ.

“The hackers targeted innovations and IP from our country’s greatest minds,” he commented. “These defendants are now fugitives from American justice, no longer free to travel outside Iran without risk of arrest. The only way they will see the outside world is through their computer screens, but stripped of their greatest asset—anonymity.”

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