US Intelligence Blames Iran for Hack on Trump Campaign

Feds confirmed Irans involvement in the email attack against Roger Stone after Microsoft, Google reported Iranian APT action against both presidential campaigns.

The FBI confirmed that Iran was behind a cyberattack against an adviser to former President Donald Trump, itself part of a larger set of attacks against 2024 US presidential campaigns, as the Iranian government attempts to disrupt the upcoming US elections.
Longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone
reported
about a week ago that his
email had been hacked
, with attackers infilitrating his account and impersonating him to target Trumps overall presidential campaign. In a joint statement, several federal intelligence agencies attributed these recently reported activities to compromise former President Trumps campaign to increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle.
The intelligence community is confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties, according to
the statement
published yesterday by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Such activity, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the US election process.
The confirmation of Irans involvement in attempts to disrupt the 2024 US presidential election is not surprising given that security researchers at Microsoft and Google already had discovered and reported it separately. On Aug. 9, Microsoft revealed that Iran-backed Charming Kitten/APT42 group, which is connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), used the
hacked email account of a former senior advisor
to send malicious phishing emails to a high-ranking official in a presidential campaign, among other threat activity by the group.
Googles Threat Analysis Group (TAG) followed up that report up last week, claiming that Charming Kitten was behind attempts to
log in to personal email accounts of about a dozen individuals
affiliated with not only Trump but also President Biden and Vice President and presidential candidate Kamala Harris. The researchers did not name the officials targeted by activity, but said they included current and former US government officials as well as individuals associated with the
respective campaigns
.
This years elections are perceived by Iran to be be particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests, increasing Tehrans inclination to try to shape the outcome. That means there will be continued efforts by Iran-backed threat groups like Charming Kitten and others to
disrupt the elections
.
Russia-backed attacks on the presidential campaigns in 2016 that some believe led to Trumps victory are still fresh in the minds of federal officials, who want to avoid letting foreign entities have a say in US elections if they can help it. Iran and Russia have employed these tactics not only in the United States during this and prior federal election cycles but also in other countries around the world, officials said in their statement.
Security experts have been warning for some time that cybercriminals would
widely target
the 2024 US elections, with technologies such as
artificial intelligence
, among others, making it easier for them to do so. There is, however, evidence to suggest that both campaigns are
better prepared in 2024
to defend against such attacks than they were in previous elections.
Lest campaign officials and other election stakeholders forget, intelligence agencies reminded them in their statement that Irans increased intent to exploit our online platforms in support of their objectives also means that they collectively need to increase the resilience of those platforms.
Suggested methods of defense include using strong passwords and only official email accounts for official business; updating software regularly; avoid clicking on links or opening attachments from suspicious emails before confirming their authenticity with the sender; and using multifactor authentication.

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US Intelligence Blames Iran for Hack on Trump Campaign