Biden-Harris Campaign, Trump Operative Stone Also Target of Hackers
The case of the apparent hack of the Trump campaign continues to expand, with reports of both the Biden-Harris campaign and ex-President Donald Trump operative Roger Stone being targeted and other news organizations beyond Politico saying they received anonymous emails containing internal campaign documents.
The FBI confirmed that it was investigating the Trump campaign’s reports over the weekend of an intrusion into its email system and the leak of documents to Politico, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. Campaign officials have put the blame on Iranian-sponsored bad actors, pointing to a Microsoft report that outlined efforts by Iran to interfere in the upcoming U.S. elections and noted an attack on an unnamed presidential candidate’s campaign.
“We can confirm the FBI is investigating the matter,” the agency said in a brief statement August 12.
According to a CNN report, hackers accessed Stone’s email account in June in hopes of breaking into the account of a senior officials in Trump’s campaign. It was part of a larger effort to access campaign networks, according to an unnamed source.
Both the FBI and Microsoft contacted Stone, telling him that his personal email was compromised a “foreign state actor” that wanted to leverage the account to send phishing emails to others in the Trump campaign to gain access into its network, a source told the news outlet.
Microsoft: Iran Targeting Elections
In its report, Microsoft’s Threat Analysis Center wrote that a threat group connected with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in June “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor.” Microsoft’s report didn’t name the official or which campaign that were targeted.
Stone’s attorney confirmed he was contacted by the FBI and Microsoft but wouldn’t comment further.
The Washington Post reported that three members of the Biden-Harris campaign received phishing emails days before President Biden announced he was withdrawing from the race and endorsing Harris. A spokesperson for Harris’ campaign wrote in a statement to the media that the organization was not aware of security breaches of its systems and that it “vigilantly monitors and protects against cyberthreats.”
The source of the Trump campaign documents leaked to the news outlets was an AOL email belonging to someone calling themselves “Robert.” A document dated February 23 apparently was a dossier about Ohio Senator JD Vance, who months later was tapped by Trump to be his vice presidential running mate.
Iranian Denial
Iran officials have denied being behind the hacks, but both Microsoft last week and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) late last month noted that Iranian-backed threat groups were ramping up efforts to disrupt the November elections by creating distrust of U.S. political institutions and sowing social discord among the electorate.
Microsoft counted at least four such groups running different operations while the ODNI wrote in an advisory that Iran is “working to influence the presidential election, probably because Iranian leaders want to avoid an outcome they perceive would increase tensions with the United States. Tehran relies on vast webs of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation and have notably been active in exacerbating tensions over the Israel-Gaza conflict.”
“Recent activity suggests the Iranian regime – along with the Kremlin – may be equally engaged in election 2024,” the IT giant wrote.
Attacks Likely to Continue
Foreign countries – in particular Russia – have meddled in U.S. elections for years, but their work garnered particular attention during the 2016 presidential campaign when Russia worked to tilt the election in Trump’s favor. Others – with China and Iran in particular – have tried to disrupt subsequent campaigns.
Chris Krebs, who was CISA director before being fired by Trump after the 2020 election and now the chief intelligence and public policy officer for cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that what the country is seeing is the “Russification of Iranian info ops.”
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), a harsh critic of Trump, wrote on X that “we should all condemn any foreign interference in our elections, no matter which party it harms or helps, Democrats or Republicans. … We are still waiting on additional information here, but whether this apparent hack was another example of foreign interference or not, it must be rejected by all parties and leaders.”
