Last Friday, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced the indictment of nine Iranians who worked for an organization named the Mabna Institute. According to prosecutors, the defendants stole more than 31 terabytes of data from universities, companies, and government agencies around the world. The cost to the universities alone reportedly amounted to approximately $3.4 billion. The information stolen from these universities was used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) or sold for profit inside Iran. PhishLabs has been tracking this same threat group since late-2017, designating them Silent Librarian. Since discovery, we have been working with the FBI, ISAC partners, and other international law enforcement agencies to help understand and mitigate these attacks.
The same group is tracked under different names by different vendors.
| Vendor | Name |
|---|---|
| OSINT | COBALT DICKENS |
| OSINT | Mabna Institute |
| OSINT | TA407 |
| OSINT | TA4900 |
| OSINT | Yellow Nabu |
| OSINT | Mabna Institute Group |
No IOCs extracted yet from reports naming this actor.
Every report in the Global Intel Library that names Silent Librarian, newest first. Open any report to see the full analysis with provenance.
No reports in the Lore library name this actor yet.
Indicators from free threat feeds (abuse.ch ThreatFox, AlienVault OTX) attributed to Silent Librarian. Each row shows why it was linked and where it came from.
No feed indicators linked to this actor yet. Feeds are checked every hour.
Open-source reports about this actor collected from MISP Galaxy and MITRE ATT&CK.