Three Iranian nationals were charged with “allegedly orchestrating a scheme to hack into the computer networks of multiple U.S. victims,” including small businesses, government agencies, health care centers, and religious institutions, the Department of Justice announced Wednesday.
Since October 2020, the men — Mansour Ahmadi, Ahmad Khatibi Aghda, and Amir Hossein Nickaein Ravari — allegedly planned a scheme to gain access to computers of “hundreds of victims” in the U.S., the U.K., Israel, Iran, and elsewhere. The suspects allegedly hacked computers to obtain data, and used encryption attacks to make computers unusable unless a random payment was made, the DOJ said.
The men also allegedly targeted a township, accounting firms, electric utility companies, a public housing corporation, a domestic violence shelter, a county government, a construction company, and a state bar association, according to the indictment.
All of the suspects remain at large abroad.
The Iranian government was not named in the indictment, but a DOJ official scrutinized the country for creating a “safe haven” for “cyber criminals.”
“The Government of Iran has created a safe haven where cyber criminals acting for personal gain flourish and defendants like these are able to hack and extort victims, including critical infrastructure providers,” Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division said in the statement. “This indictment makes clear that even other Iranians are less safe because their own government fails to follow international norms and stop Iranian cyber criminals.”
Ahmadi, Khatibi, and Nickaein are charged “with one count of conspiring to commit computer fraud and related activity in connection with computers,” which carries a maximum sentence of five years; “one count of intentionally damaging a protected computer,” which carries a maximum sentence of ten years; and “one count of transmitting a demand in relation to damaging a protected computer,” which has a maximum sentence of five years, the indictment read.
Ahmadi was charged with an additional “count of intentionally damaging a protected computer.”
The cyber attacks orchestrated by Iranian nationals have continued to endanger national security while the Biden administration is in talks about a return to the nuclear agreement with Tehran.
In June, FBI director Christopher Wray said that Iran plotted a cyberattack against the Boston Children’s Hospital last summer, calling the planned attack “one of the most despicable cyberattacks I’ve seen.”
The DOJ also revealed in August that an Iranian national allegedly planned to assassinate former national-security adviser John Bolton and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo.