The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the United States Treasury today imposed sanctions on 10 individuals and two businesses connected to a ransomware gang linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and blacklisted their Bitcoin wallet addresses.
The department claims that the people and organisations that have been added to the government’s sanctions list took part in coordinated ransomware attacks that have been directed at a variety of American crypto businesses and organisations since at least 2020.
In October 2020, Mansour Ahmadi, Ahmad Khatibi, and Amir Hossein Nickaein started their cyber scheme and targeted businesses and institutions in the US, UK, Israel, Russia, and Iran.
A children’s hospital, a city in New Jersey, a rural electric utility firm, and a variety of other enterprises are among the alleged American targets of the Iranian outfit, according to Treasury officials. Both Najee Technology Hooshmand Fater LLC and Afkar System Yazd Company have identified the individuals as being either employees or associates of those companies.
According to the complaint in New Jersey, the defendants stole data from the computer systems of their victims by taking advantage of known flaws in network hardware and software. They allegedly encrypted data on victims’ systems in some cases and demanded a ransom to unlock it; in other cases, they threatened to release the stolen data unless a victim paid them not to.
The defendants are not charged with carrying out orders of the Iranian government, according to the indictment. All of the defendants are not in American custody. All three of them, according to Justice Department officials, are thought to be in Iran.
Due to the accused perpetrators’ inclusion on the OFAC sanctions list, American people and businesses are no longer allowed to do business with them. This applies to the Bitcoin wallet addresses that are displayed with the names of their purported owners.
In August 2019, the Iranian central bank banned cryptocurrency trading within the country, however since then, the use of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin to pay for imports has been approved by the government. Although they are permitted to use for this purpose, other cryptocurrencies have not yet been made public by the authorities.
On the other hand, Iran legalised bitcoin mining in the same month. The country then established a licensing system for cryptocurrency miners, requiring them to submit applications, present identification, pay higher electricity bills, and directly sell the bitcoins they produced to the government.