The US Department of Justice has charged 17 Iranians in connection with a years-long, state-sponsored hacking campaign that allegedly stole vast amounts of data from American universities, government agencies and private companies. Officials say members of the Iran-based Mabna Institute, working on behalf of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, ran the operation from at least 2013 until December 2017, prompting the FBI to call it "a serious threat to our national security" given its scale and ties to the Iranian state.

The DoJ said the hackers targeted 144 US universities and 42 private firms, stealing more than 31 terabytes of academic data and intellectual property worth an estimated $3.4bn. They allegedly compromised 8,000 professor email accounts across 144 US institutions and 178 international ones, out of 100,000 academic accounts targeted worldwide, and also breached at least five US federal and state agencies plus companies in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, Sweden and the UK. Nine of the 17 charged had already faced a 2018 indictment, and the department is offering a $10m reward for information leading to five of the alleged hackers still at large.