The United States is intensifying its search for Amir Yariab, a senior official in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Cyber-Electronic Command.
The Department of State’s Rewards for Justice programme
announced on Thursday an offer of up to $10 million for information leading to
Yariab’s location.
Yariab leads the IRGC-CEC’s Cyber Operations Command and
directs multiple components of the CEC, including Shahid Hemmat and Shahid
Shushtari.
Others are CyberAv3ngers, Dadeh Afzar Arman, Mehrsam
Andisheh Saz Nik, Net Peygard Samavat, Aria Sepehr Ayandehsazan, and Ayandeh
Sazan Sepehr Arya.
Washington says the affiliate organisations have conducted
cyber and cyber-enabled information operations targeting critical
infrastructure sectors.
The targets include defence, news, shipping, hotels,
airlines, energy, and financial and telecommunications systems in Europe, the
Middle East, and the U.S.
In August, the U.S. Department of Justice charged 17 members
of the Iran-based Mabna Institute over a coordinated campaign of cyber
intrusions into computer systems that had been ongoing since 2013.
The meddling affected 144 U.S.-based universities, 178
foreign universities, at least 42 U.S.-based companies, 11 foreign companies,
five U.S. federal and state agencies, and at least two NGOs.
The institute, according to the DoJ, stole more than 31
terabytes of academic data and intellectual property from the universities, as
well as the email accounts of employees at the firms, government agencies, and
NGOs.
The indictment says the 17 defendants conducted many of the
intrusions on behalf of the IRGC and other Iranian entities. Nine of them were
charged in a seven-count indictment announced in March 2018.
The case is assigned to Jesse M. Furman, a federal judge in
the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The defendants
face between two and 20 years in prison.
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