Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a televised speech in Tehran, Iran. Official Khamenei Website/Handout via REUTERS

Microsoft’s Digital Threat Analysis Center on Friday attributed the January hacking of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to an “Iranian nation-state actor” in response to their #MullahsGetOut cartoon contest.

In January, a group calling itself “Holy Souls” hacked the information of 200,000 Charlie Hebdo customers and posted a sample of their personal data, including full names and addresses. French newspaper Le Monde was able to verify the veracity of at least part of the data, which Holy Souls put up for sale at a price tag of 20 bitcoin (roughly $340,000 at the time).

Microsoft now assesses that “Holy Souls” is the Iranian state hacking group that they have labeled “NEPTUNIUM”, which the US Department of Justice has referred to as “Emennet Pasargad” in its indictment of two hackers wanted on charges related to interfering in the 2020 US elections.

Charlie Hebdo’s contest called for submissions in an international competition to caricature Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Cartoonists and caricaturists must support Iranians who are fighting for their freedom, by ridiculing this religious leader from another age and consigning him to historical oblivion,” the contest prompt from December read. “So get drawing and make sure that Ali Khamenei is the last Supreme Leader the Iranians have to suffer !”

The 30 winning entries include images of Khamenei in his underwear, being hanged by a noose made from the hair of hijab-less women, and wearing a bomb-turban in the style of the Prophet Muhammad cartoon whose publication was the motive in the 2015 al-Qaeda terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo’s office in Paris that killed eight of their staff and four others. The January issue that published the cartoons coincided with the eighth anniversary of that attack.

Announcing the winners, Charlie Hebdo said they had received “more than 300 drawings…(as well as thousands of threats).”

While Iran has not claimed responsibility for the hacking, the Commander-in-Chief of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, General Hossein Salami, said revenge would be taken against the satirists.

“With regard to the issue of Charlie Hebdo, I refer the French people and the executives of this institution to the fate of Salman Rushdie,” Salami said in a televised address on Jan. 14. “Ultimately, however, after 30 years, a young zealous Muslim exacted courageous revenge on him. Salman Rushdie will never be back. Now you [at Charlie Hebdo] have made this big mistake. No matter when, sooner or later, the Muslims will exact revenge. Say: ‘Allah Akbar!'”