{"id":9838,"date":"2018-04-25T12:15:19","date_gmt":"2018-04-25T16:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/?p=9838"},"modified":"2018-04-25T12:16:29","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T16:16:29","slug":"irans-cyber-attack-hits-german-universities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/9838\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran’s Cyber-Attack Hits German Universities"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, the German magazine Der\u00a0Spiegel reported<\/a>\u00a0that Iranian regime’s hackers targeted at least 23 German universities as part of a global cyber-attack and\u00a0stole unpublished research, dissertations, and conference reports.<\/p>\n

The report further stated that the cyber-attacks started in 2014, and can be traced back to the Tehran Mabna Institute, a private company linked to Iran\u2019s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC<\/a>). The statement also said, \u201cThey hacked the computer systems of approximately 320 universities in 22 countries. 144 of the victims are American universities. The defendants stole research that cost the universities approximately $3.4 billion to procure and maintain.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nine employees working there were accused of hacking into U.S. universities, companies, and state agencies, by the United States Department of Justice in March of 2018.<\/p>\n

Allegedly, the hackers also broke into the accounts of employees of U.S. government and non-governmental entities, including the Department of Labor, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the states of Hawaii and Indiana, Indiana\u2019s Department of Education, the United Nations, and the United Nations Children\u2019s Fund.<\/p>\n

The hacking was conducted at the behest of Iran, according to U.S. officials at that time, and Mabna Institute is believed to function as a contractor for the Revolutionary Guards. Sigal Mandelker, the Treasury\u2019s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, observed last month, \u201cThe IRGC plays a central role in Iran\u2019s maligned activities across the world, including fomenting terrorism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The German Federal Prosecutor\u2019s Office has now launched an investigation into foreign espionage.<\/p>\n

U.S. cybersecurity specialist and ex-FBI man, Crane Hassolder has said, \u201cIt\u2019s the largest cyber-attack I know of anywhere in the world.\u201d Since last December, his company has been investigating the attacks, and according to Hassolder, the hackers sent a phishing mail to the university mailboxes, where scientists were asked to click on a link. Recently, Hassolder\u2019s company discovered 46 new phishing sites in six different countries. \u201cThe hackers have not stopped,\u201d he said, \u201cthe attack continues.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to its parliamentary committee on intelligence affairs, Germany\u2019s government IT network is also under an \u201congoing\u201d cyber attack. \u201cIt is a real cyber-attack on parts of the government system. It\u2019s an ongoing process, an ongoing attack,\u201d said Armin Schuster, chairman of the committee, adding that no further details could be given to avoid passing crucial information on to the attackers.<\/p>\n

Experts warn that despite the ongoing investigation, the authorities have so far failed to contain Iran\u2019s malign activities.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, the German magazine Der\u00a0Spiegel reported\u00a0that Iranian regime’s hackers targeted at least 23 German universities as part of a global cyber-attack and\u00a0stole unpublished research, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":9841,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9838"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9842,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9838\/revisions\/9842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.irandemocratic.org\/public_html\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}