WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Justice Department announced Thursday evening that it had seized the Handala website, a backup site, and two other sites that boasted of Iranian cyber campaigns. The FBI seized the website of the Iran-linked hacker group Handala as part of the enforcement action.

On Tuesday, the Handala website was replaced with a boilerplate image displaying the Justice Department and FBI logos. The site displayed a notice stating, "Law enforcement authorities determined this domain was used to conduct, facilitate, or support malicious cyber activities on behalf of, or in coordination with, a foreign state actor."

The Handala website previously chronicled the group's alleged exploits and hosted hacked files for download. The Justice Department described the seized sites as "psychological operations" run by Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security.

Handala claimed credit for hacking Stryker, a Michigan-based Fortune 300 medical technology company with offices around the world. The Stryker cyberattack disrupted the company's order processing, manufacturing, and shipping, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The hackers appear to have accessed Microsoft Intune and deleted all data on corporate devices en masse, according to a company employee and cybersecurity experts. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency publicly acknowledged the hack Wednesday evening and recommended that companies secure access to their Microsoft Intune accounts.

On its Telegram channel, Handala acknowledged that it had lost control of its website. In a Telegram post, Handala announced that a new website would be live soon, while its X account was suspended. Handala's Telegram channel was active as of Thursday morning.

"It's an important step, as most of Handala's work was to publish their work and create the physiological effect of the damage, even if exaggerated. So taking out their websites and channels is hitting them where it matters," said Gil Messing, Chief of Staff of Check Point. "In the past they've managed to bypass takedown by bringing up new channels instead," he said.

American and Israeli cybersecurity experts who track Handala believe it is an operation of Iran's Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Handala has claimed to hack the Israeli company Verifone, though Verifone said it had not experienced any attacks on its systems.