WASHINGTON _ Two Iranian hackers charged Wednesday in a federal indictment were accused of attacking the computer networks of hospitals and other targets in 43 states, a broad criminal extortion campaign that walloped a heart hospital in Kansas and disrupted one of the nation's largest diagnostic blood testing companies in North Carolina.
Federal prosecutors said the three-year cybercrime spree caused tens of millions of dollars in damage from coast to coast. It marked the first U.S. indictment against foreign hackers engaged in a for-profit ransomware and extortion scheme.
The two hackers developed unique tools to hold U.S. computer networks hostage from Iran, prosecutors said. The two Iranians, Faramarz Shahi Savandi, 34, and Mohammad Mehdi Shah Mansouri, 27, remain at large, presumably in their homeland, officials said.
