HOWELL: Welcome back to CNN NEWSROOM. The U.S. says it has uncovered a massive and brazen hacking scheme linked to Iran's government. It's indicted nine Iranians for stealing huge amounts of data. Their target list was seemingly endless and they could strike again.</s>ALLEN: They're still out there. The U.S. says the hackers went after university professors, global companies, even government groups and the U.N. CNN's Jessica Schneider has more on the charges from Washington for us.</s>JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: These are government-linked hackers, according to the Justice Department, doing work on behalf of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's the Iranian intelligence agency. They allegedly began the hacking campaign in 2013 and the government says they stole troves of data, including material from 8,000 university professors worldwide as well as various government agencies here in the U.S. This material included academic journals, dissertations and entire e- mail inboxes. The FBI deputy director, he said it amounted to $3.4 billion worth of material from these universities, many of which are publicly funded, so essentially stealing taxpayer dollars. This was an intricate scheme, where these hackers did surveillance of each potential target, then sent sophisticated e-mails that appeared to be from other university professors and the links within the emails connected to sites that then stole the e-mails, the user names and the passwords. At this point, they have been indicted, these nine hackers. But criminal prosecution could be difficult since all nine of them are still in Iran and there's no way to extradite them. However, the Treasury Department has imposed sanctions on the hackers and the entity they worked for. At this point, law enforcement here in the U.S. --</s>SCHNEIDER: -- said they are continuing to work with partners worldwide to crack down on these state-sponsored attacks, including any that could be in the works -- Jessica Schneider, CNN, Washington.</s>ALLEN: Coming up here, there a haze over Greece and it's dust, coming from Africa. Derek Van Dam will have more about it in just a moment.
U.S. Hackers Linked to Iranian Government.