US digital giant Meta announced on Friday that it had blocked a series of WhatsApp accounts that it believes are linked to an Iranian hacking group and which it believes targeted political leaders close to US President Joe Biden or his predecessor Donald Trump.
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According to Meta, these numbers were used to approach people in several countries besides the United States, particularly in “Israel, Palestine, Iran and the United Kingdom.”
“Their efforts appeared to focus on political and diplomatic officials and public figures, including some associated with the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump,” the group said in a statement.
The investigation reportedly led to the APT42 group, “an Iranian cyber threat known for its campaigns using simple phishing techniques to steal people’s access.”
Meta had already linked the group in a previous investigation to attempts to target human rights defenders in Iran and Israel, politicians in the United States and researchers and journalists specializing in Iran around the world.
Among the techniques used, hackers pretended to be technical support from the access provider AOL, Yahoo!, Google or Microsoft.
Meta said it had been alerted by reports sent by some of the people targeted, and also believed that none of the intrusion attempts had been successful.
This is not the first time that Iran has been accused of attempting to hack political officials during the election campaign and as the November 5 presidential elections approach.
OpenAI had alerted on August 16 that ChatGPT had been used to produce content, particularly related to the elections, by an Iranian group, identified as Storm-20235, seeking to carry out an influence operation, specifying that the content had reached a limited audience.
OpenAI linked this operation to the one revealed on August 9 by Microsoft, also of Iranian origin, which combined the creation of fake news sites, cyberattacks and hacks, as well as fake accounts on social networks, which sometimes went so far as to try to intimidate or incite violence against political figures.
Donald Trump’s campaign team, for its part, claimed on August 10 that it had suffered a hack, accusing “foreign sources” and pointing the finger at the Middle Eastern country.
The specialized media Politico had previously said it had received emails containing information about the Republican candidate’s campaign from a source who declined to identify himself, with U.S. authorities confirming that the source was indeed linked to Iran.
