The Justice Department has unsealed a 14-count indictment charging 17 Iranian nationals in a cyber theft conspiracy whose victims included a U.S. healthcare company and a COVID-19 vaccine developer.
Prosecutors allege the defendants were leaders, contractors or hackers-for-hire affiliated with Iran’s Mabna Institute, which conducted intrusions on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other Iranian entities beginning around 2013. Among the roughly 42 U.S. private-sector victims named in the indictment were three academic publishers, four media and entertainment companies, one biotechnology company and one healthcare company, according to court documents. The Aug. 18 indictment does not name the healthcare victim.
A separate intrusion campaign tied to the same case, running from 2018 to 2022, specifically targeted a COVID-19 vaccine developer. Court documents allege defendant Mojtaba Galekuhi conducted a password-spray attack against the vaccine developer’s servers in December 2020, as part of a scheme with co-defendants Keyvan Fayaz and Saber Shahbazi Ballojeh that also compromised a major airline, three U.S. defense contractors and a U.S. public utility. Prosecutors say victims of that campaign suffered in excess of $20 million in costs to investigate and remediate the breaches.
Nine of the 17 defendants were previously charged in a 2018 indictment; the new filing adds eight defendants and expands the alleged scope of the conspiracy. The case, assigned to U.S. District Judge Jesse M. Furman in the Southern District of New York, reflects continued federal scrutiny of state-linked cyber campaigns whose targets have extended into U.S. healthcare and life sciences organizations.
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