Eye Spy - May 2018

Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari,

Commander of Iran’s IRGC

EYE SPY INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE 115 2018 23

made (phishing e-mails) and credentials

compromised, allowing huge amounts of

information to be secured and in some cases

resold.

In respect of the volume of data obtained, US

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said:

“These nine Iranian nationals allegedly stole

more than 31 terabytes of documents and

data. For many of these intrusions, the

defendants acted at the behest of the Iranian

government and, specifically, the Iranian

Revolutionary Guard Corps.” In plain language

the theft was approximately equivalent to the

disk space necessary to hold a digitised

version of the entire print collection of the

Library of Congress - 830 miles of book

shelves holding 39 million books.

US Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman for the

Southern District of New York described the

effort as “one of the largest state-sponsored

hacking sprees in history.”

FBI Deputy Director David Bowditch, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein
(right) and FBI New York Assistant Director in Charge William Sweeney, discuss the
operation which resulted in the demise of a major Iranian cyber spy ring

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In recent times, the CIA and MI6 have reported

upon the expansion of the Iranian intelligence

services and launched operations around the

world to thwart the activities of MOIS.

President Trump described Iran as the

“world’s leading state sponsor of terror.”

The US Treasury said on its website that it

was placing sanctions on those accused and

described the nine men as “fugitives.” They

may face extradition in more than 100

countries if they travel outside of Iran.

Britain’s Foreign Office supported the US

action. Foreign Office Minister for Cyber, Lord

Tariq Ahmad said: “The action is a further step

demonstrating that malicious cyber activity

will not go unpunished. Mabna Institute

employees can no longer travel freely,

curtailing their career prospects outside of

Iran.” The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre

(NCSC), also confirmed the Mabna Institute

had targeted British universities. GCHQ

security officials said the tools used by the

Iranians allowed Tehran to carry out surveil-

lance on millions of people.

The individuals named have been

charged with conspiracy to commit

computer intrusions, wire fraud,

unauthorised access of a computer and

aggravated identity theft.

1. Gholamreza Rafatnejad, 38; 2. Abuzar
   Gohari Moqadam, 37; 3. Roozbeh Sabahi, 24;


2. Mohammed Reza Sabahi, 26; 5. Sajjad
   Tahmasebi, 30; 6. Abdollah Karima, A.k.a. Vahid
   Karima, 39; 7. Mostafa Sadeghi, 28; 8. Seyed
   Ali Mirkarimi, 34; 9. Ehsan Mohammadi, 37

Lord

Tariq

Ahmad