Iranian hackers tried to target both the Republican and Democratic presidential election campaigns earlier this summer, Google has claimed. The company says the attack was part of a larger email phishing operation, which involved sending deceptive messages to targets in a bid to steal personal information or hack their accounts.
The report by the tech giant, which was published on Wednesday, comes after former US President Donald Trump’s campaign announced that its internal emails and documents had been stolen “by foreign sources.” It claimed Tehran was responsible for the hack and was trying to interfere with the upcoming US presidential election. Iran has denied the allegations.
In its report, Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) stated that it had disrupted a “small but steady” phishing operation conducted by APT42, which it described as an Iranian government-backed threat actor and hacking group with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
According to Google, APT42 “consistently targets high-profile users in Israel and the US, including current and former government officials, political campaigns, diplomats, individuals who work at think tanks, as well as NGOs and academic institutions that contribute to foreign policy conversations.”
Google says it blocked “numerous” attempts by the group to log into the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen individuals affiliated with US President Joe Biden, his VP Kamala Harris, and former President Trump in May and June. These included current and former government officials and individuals associated with the respective campaigns.
In the past six months, the US and Israel reportedly accounted for some 60% of the group’s known geographic targeting, the TAG report said, stating that APT42’s activities “demonstrate the group’s aggressive, multi-pronged effort to quickly alter its operation focus in support of Iran’s political and military priorities.”
On Saturday, Politico reported that, over the past month, it had started receiving emails from an anonymous person, only known as ‘Robert’, containing various documents related to the Trump campaign. These allegedly included a 271-page vetting report on Trump’s running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and a dossier on Florida Senator Marco Rubio. The source also supposedly told the outlet that he possesses a “variety” of Trump’s legal and court documents, as well as information on internal campaign discussions.
The Trump campaign has insisted that these documents had been stolen by “foreign sources hostile to the US,” and pointed to a prior Microsoft report that warned about a “spear phishing email” scheme being conducted by the IRGC.
However, Iran’s permanent mission to the UN has denied the accusation and has insisted that the Iranian government “neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election.”