The FBI is investigating allegations that sensitive documents from former US president Donald Trump’s election campaign were stolen in a cyberintrusion, as well as attempts to gain access to US Vice President Kamala Harris’ election campaign, days after the Trump campaign declared it had been hacked by Iran.
The FBI released a brief statement on the Trump matter reading: “We can confirm the FBI is investigating this matter.”
The Trump campaign provided no specific evidence of Iran’s involvement, but the claim came shortly after Microsoft issued a report detailing foreign agents’ attempts to interfere in the US election this year.
Photo: Reuters
The report cited an instance of an Iranian military intelligence unit in June sending “a spear-phishing e-mail to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised e-mail account” of a former senior adviser.
Two people familiar with the matter said the Biden-Harris campaign was also targeted in the suspected Iranian cyberintrusion that is under investigation. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the details of the investigation.
Politico on Saturday reported that it began receiving e-mails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL e-mail account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier the campaign had apparently done on Republican vice presidential nominee Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. The document was dated Feb. 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
“These documents were obtained illegally” and “intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
At least three staffers in the Biden-Harris campaign were targeted with phishing e-mails, but investigators have uncovered no evidence that the attempt was successful, one of the people said.
The attempts came before US President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.
The FBI began investigating that cyberincident in June and intelligence officials believe Iran was behind the attempts, that person said.
Officials have also been in touch with technology companies about the possibility that people linked to the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns were being targeted through e-mail.
“Our campaign vigilantly monitors and protects against cyberthreats, and we are not aware of any security breaches of our systems,” Harris’ campaign said in a statement.
Iran’s mission to the UN, when asked about the claim of the Trump campaign, denied being involved.
However, Iran long has been suspected of running hacking campaigns targeting its enemies in the Middle East and beyond. Tehran has also threatened to retaliate against Trump over the 2020 drone strike he ordered that killed prominent Revolutionary Guard General Qassem Soleimani.
In its report, Microsoft said that “foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 US election started off slowly but has steadily picked up pace over the last six months due initially to Russian operations, but more recently from Iranian activity.”
“Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles. Iran’s operations have been notable and distinguishable from Russian campaigns for appearing later in the election season and employing cyberattacks more geared toward election conduct than swaying voters,” it said.
“Recent activity suggests the Iranian regime — along with the Kremlin — may be equally engaged in election 2024,” Microsoft concluded.
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