A hack on a UK power plant, charges against Mabna Institute personnel, and Operation Economic Outcast are the newest developments in the war on Iran.
On August 24th, 2026, news broke of a power plant in the United Kingdom being shut down by an attack that is believed to have been organized by Iran-linked hackers. Reportedly, this attack occurred around the same time as another set of hacks on critical infrastructure in the US in late July. Then, Minnesotan water systems weathered coordinated cyberattacks on Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) which affected the networks of the community water systems. There, Iran-linked hackers were also blamed for the incident, with the April 7th warning about PLCs from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) alluding to “hostilities between Iran, and the United States and Israel.”
These “hostilities” are currently a full-blown war, after the US and Israel attacked Iran in Operation Epic Fury at the end of February 2026. From the inception of the first strikes, the cyber domain has been a critical area for offensive operations. General Dan Caine, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman explained shortly after the attacks that US CYBERCOM and SPACECOM worked together to “disrupt, disorient and confuse the enemy” as part of statement that was called “the most public acknowledgement of its cyber operations to date” by the Pentagon. Since the initial barrage, Iran has also joined the fight in cyberspace, with Iran-linked hackers targeting public Israeli street cameras, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), Kash Patel, medtech company Stryker, and allegedly, Lockheed Martin.
This week’s power plant hack highlighted the appeal of critical infrastructure in attacks motivated by geopolitical tensions. The Principal Security Researcher at Orange Cyberdefense, Ric Derbyshire, explained: “A four-day outage at a UK generation site is still significant even when the lost capacity, as in this case, is small. The incident creates a second-order cognitive effect across wider society by showing that UK energy infrastructure can be reached and disrupted through cyber activity. That perception can shape how people view the resilience of critical infrastructure and potentially undermine public trust and confidence.” This sentiment may have also colored federal perspectives in the US after the hacks on Minnesota, leading to a crackdown on Iran related crime.
Less than a week after Trump released a memorandum targeting transnational cyber-enabled crime by employing companies in the private sector (a separate example of the Trump administration working against foreign-based fraud), the Department of Justice announced they had charged 17 Iranians for cyber theft through a coordinated intrusion campaign into a slew of computer systems, including those of “144 U.S.-based universities, 178 foreign universities, at least 42 U.S.-based private sector companies, at least 11 foreign private sector companies, at least five U.S. federal and state government agencies, and at least two non-governmental organizations (NGOs).”
According to the press release, the defendants who worked under the Mabna Institute, hacked at the direction of organizations like the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). They operated in a “hacking for hire operation” and managed to steal a minimum of 31.5 terabytes in intellectual property and information from research institutions around the world, mainly aiming at professor email accounts. The university hacking campaign, which ran for four years after starting in 2013, set its sights on 100,000 accounts, and successfully infiltrated 8,000 in the US alongside the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea. The data and documents that were stolen - login credentials, academic journals, ebooks, theses and dissertations - were then sold on Megapaper and Gigapaper, two websites that serviced Iranian customers looking to access the foreign online university libraries.
For these crimes, along with the intrusions on private sector companies and government entities, the DoJ has presented the 17 defendants with several charges: conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, computer fraud - unauthorized access for private financial gain, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit computer intrusions, and computer intrusion. The maximum sentences for the charges range from two years (for identity theft) to 20, for wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
While the charges come nine years after the hacking campaign ended, the US sees this period of time as a credit, not a demerit, to law enforcement efforts. Jamie McDonald, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York discussed this in the press release: “More than eight years after making the original indictment public, these charges make clear that the passage of time will not deter us from identifying and pursuing those who target the United States from abroad. Cyber operations have become a central instrument of national power, and attacks on American and allied institutions carry direct consequences for our security and economic strength.”
The US’ latest actions in its war on Iran take this concern about economic strength to an offensive angle. On the same day that people learned of the UK power plant hacks, the US declared a new development to Operation Epic Fury - Operation Economic Outcast. This new plan is to sanction huge swaths of Iran’s economy, namely aviation, digital assets, gold, shipping and technology. On top of this, the Office of Foreign Assets Control is sanctioning more than 60 entities that allow Iran to get illegal nuclear technology, run cyber campaigns, and make oil revenue. The strongly-worded statement, delivered by Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, also warns those who don’t align with the actions: “This is a sustained campaign to collapse every last option for Iran. Let there be no ambiguity as to the position of the United States: An economic engagement of any kind with this murderous regime will expose those responsible to the full reach of American power.” While Iran (and some economic experts) argue the sanctions may not have the desired effect with the country’s oil, time will tell if Operation Economic Outcast’s guidelines on technology are enough to curb Iran-linked cyber operations.