The U.S. Department of Justice today announced indictments against 17 members of the Mabna Institute, an Iranian organization alleged to be behind a coordinated cyberattack campaign on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp. 

Federal prosecutors said the group allegedly hacked into 144 U.S.-based universities, 42 U.S.-based private sector companies and at least five federal and state agencies, as well as a large number of foreign universities and companies, since 2013. 

The charges reveal a broader effort behind a “sweeping state-sponsored campaign to steal research and intellectual property from American universities, businesses and government institutions,” Jamie McDonald, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement.

Prosecutors allege more than 100,000 accounts of professors were targeted by the alleged hackers, and 8,000 of those accounts were successfully compromised.

In all, the attackers stole more than 31TB of academic data and intellectual property from various universities and broke into employee email accounts at universities, private companies and government agencies. 

The charges are part of a superseding indictment that originated against the Mabna Institute eight years ago. Nine of the 17 defendants were part of a seven-count indictment unsealed in the 2018 case.  

Iran war rages on

The charges come amid an investigation into a coordinated hack of water systems in 12 U.S. states. No charges have been filed in that case, but federal and state investigators linked the incidents to recent cyberattacks targeting industrial devices that monitor water systems. 

The U.S. has been at war with Iran since launching a bombing campaign with Israel in late February.