US State Department offers $10M reward for tips on Iranian hackers

The US State Department is putting a $10 million price tag on information about Iranian hackers who have been conducting cyber operations against American targets. The bounty, issued through the long-running Rewards for Justice program, zeroes in on individuals tied to two groups: Handala and Parsian Afzar Rayan Borna.

Who’s being targeted

The two groups, Handala and Parsian Afzar Rayan Borna, have been linked to Iranian state interests, including connections to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS).

Handala has publicly claimed responsibility for cyber intrusions targeting entities including the FBI as recently as 2026.

The Rewards for Justice program allows tipsters to submit information through anonymous channels, including Tor-based reporting systems. In some cases, the program has also offered relocation options for informants.

A pattern of escalation

This isn’t the first time the State Department has dangled eight-figure bounties for Iranian-linked hackers. In 2025, a similar $10 million reward was issued for hackers connected to a group known as CyberAv3ngers, targeting actors who had gone after US critical infrastructure, including water systems and other essential services.

The current reward announcement was issued and reissued around March 27-30, 2026, following FBI operations that disrupted some of these networks.

The Rewards for Justice program has been around since 1984, originally focused on counterterrorism. Its expansion into cyber threats reflects how much the threat landscape has shifted.

Why financial bounties work differently than sanctions

Sanctions freeze assets and restrict access to financial systems, but their effectiveness depends on enforcement and cooperation from other countries. A $10 million bounty operates on a different logic: it creates individual incentives for defection. The anonymity protections and potential relocation offers lower the barrier to coming forward.

Historically, Rewards for Justice has paid out over $250 million since its inception, though the vast majority of those payments were tied to counterterrorism rather than cyber operations.

The Tor-based reporting channel is a deliberate acknowledgment that the people most likely to have useful information are themselves technically sophisticated and understand operational security risks.

What to watch

Previous Rewards for Justice cyber bounties have led to identifications but not always arrests, given the difficulty of extraditing suspects from countries like Iran, Russia, or North Korea. The value often lies in attribution: confirming who’s behind an attack, mapping organizational structures, and building cases that support broader enforcement actions.

The targeting of specific groups rather than a broad call for information on “Iranian hackers” signals that the US appears to have enough information to name names but not enough to act on its own, which is precisely the gap that financial bounties are designed to fill.

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