Google said Wednesday that an Iranian-affiliated hacking group, APT42, targeted the campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, confirming suspicions and accusations from their campaigns.
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“In May and June, APT42 targeted the personal email accounts of approximately a dozen individuals affiliated with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, including current and former U.S. government officials and individuals associated with their respective campaigns,” a Google threat analysis team said in a blog post.
Google said it had “blocked many attempts by APT42 to connect to the personal email accounts of targeted individuals.” However, the attacks continue.
Google cybersecurity experts “continue to observe unsuccessful attempts by APT42 to compromise the personal accounts of individuals affiliated with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Donald Trump.”
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According to them, the hackers are using well-known tactics: they try to get in touch with their targets by pretending to be journalists, for example, and then send phishing emails, containing fake links that then allow access to the emails of the trapped individuals.
The APT42 group is associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, according to Google.
The California-based internet giant stressed that the hackers had also targeted “high-profile users in Israel and the United States,” including government officials, diplomats and researchers.
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign said Tuesday it was targeted by foreign hackers.
The day before, the United States had warned Iran of the consequences of interference in the American presidential election, after Donald Trump’s campaign team claimed to have suffered a hack, blaming “foreign sources”.
Trump’s team suggested Saturday that Iran was behind a hack that leaked internal communications and a dossier on JD Vance, the former president’s running mate, to journalists.
On Friday, Microsoft released a report showing that Iran is stepping up its efforts to disrupt the November 5 U.S. election through fake news sites, cyberattacks and hacks.
In 2016, Donald Trump, a presidential candidate against Hillary Clinton, was criticized for encouraging Russia to hack the Democrat’s emails in order to recover those that had been deleted.
US intelligence had concluded that Russia had influenced the 2016 election in favor of Donald Trump, something the Republican denies.
