The campaign blamed Iran, noting a recent Microsoft report revealing an attempt by Iranian military intelligence to hack into the systems of one of the presidential campaigns.
“I think it’s pretty boring information.” Iran has denied any involvement in the hack and said it has no interest in meddling with U.S. politics.
Iran has a few different motives in seeking to influence U.S. elections, intelligence officials and cybersecurity analysts say.
Recent reports from Microsoft and Recorded Future have also linked Iran’s government to networks of fake news websites and social media accounts posing as Americans.
Nevertheless, the alleged hack of the Trump campaign reportedly involved much simpler techniques: someone gained access to an email account that lacked sufficient security protections.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Less than three months remain until the U.S. s. Iran is getting more aggressive in its attempts to influence American politics, the U.S. s. citing government and commercial cybersecurity companies as examples, the most recent and egregious of which is the alleged hack of Donald Trump’s campaign.
In the past few months, groups connected to the Iranian government have secretly encouraged protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, impersonated American activists, and established networks of fake news websites and social media accounts that are ready to spread false and misleading information to audiences in the U.S. Iran has long been referred to as a “chaos agent” when it comes to cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns. s.
Even so, China and Russia continue to pose greater cyberthreats to the United States. S. Iran’s more assertive posture, according to analysts and intelligence officials, represents a major uptick in efforts to mislead, confuse, and intimidate American voters in the run-up to the election.
The speed is probably going to pick up more speed as the election draws closer and America’s enemies use the internet and AI developments to spread chaos and division.
“Ninety days before the election, we’re starting to really see that uptick and it makes sense,” said Sean Minor, a former U.S. expert on information warfare. s. army, who now works as an online threat analyst for Recorded Future, a cybersecurity company that has seen a sharp rise in cyberattacks from Iran and other countries. The closer we get, the more aggressive we believe these networks will become. “.
The FBI is looking into reports of a hack into the Trump campaign as well as attempts to infiltrate President Joe Biden’s campaign, which was later taken over by Vice President Kamala Harris after Biden withdrew. Trump’s team declared on Saturday that internal documents that had been unlawfully accessed and taken were subsequently sent to three media outlets. A recent Microsoft report that exposed an attempt by Iranian military intelligence to breach the systems of a presidential campaign was cited by the campaign as evidence of Iran’s involvement.
“A lot of people believe Iran was involved. Presumably was,” Trump stated on Univision on Tuesday before downplaying the significance of the material that had been leaked. “I find the material to be rather dull. “.
Iran claims it had no intention of interfering with US elections and has denied any role in the hack. s. politics.
U. disputes that denial. S. intelligence officers and commercial cybersecurity companies that have connected Iran’s armed forces to multiple recent operations aimed at the U.S. s. claiming that they demonstrate Iran’s expanding capacity and readiness to put them to use.
Google said on Wednesday that since May, it had discovered a group connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which it claimed had attempted to breach the personal email accounts of about a dozen individuals associated with Biden and Trump.
The business, which reported its concerns to law enforcement, claimed that the gang is still pursuing individuals connected to Biden, Trump, and Harris. It was unclear if the Google-identified network was a part of a second attempt to compromise the campaign’s systems, or if it was related to the one that Trump and Microsoft had reported.
Iran is attempting to influence the U.S. for a few different reasons. S. elections, according to cybersecurity experts and intelligence officers. The nation wants to further divide Americans and sow doubt and confusion. s. as eroding backing for Israel. Iran also seeks to harm political candidates whom it perceives as heightening tensions between Washington and Tehran.
That characterizes Trump, whose administration canceled the Iran nuclear agreement, reinstated sanctions, and gave the order to assassinate an Iranian general. Qassem Soleimani, an action that made the leaders of Iran swear retaliation.
In a joint letter published on Wednesday, the two Senate intelligence committee leaders cautioned Tehran and other adversarial governments about the U.S. s. that makes an effort to mislead Americans or tamper with the election will not be accepted.
The Democratic senator who chairs the committee, Sen., warned that meddling in the American democratic process would have repercussions. Mark Warner of Virginia and Sen. The vice chairman is Florida’s Marco Rubio.
Two Iranian nationals were accused by federal authorities in 2021 of trying to tamper with the election the previous year. The men sent violent threats to Democratic voters in emails they purported to be from the far-right Proud Boys as part of the plot.
The Iranian government had secretly aided American demonstrations against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, according to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines last month. Government-affiliated groups in Iran also encouraged protests on campuses, assumed the identity of online activists, and gave some protest groups financial support, according to Haines.
Iranian government-affiliated social media accounts and networks of bogus news websites have also been connected to recent reports from Recorded Future and Microsoft. The networks weren’t well-known when they were found, and experts speculate that they might have been set up in advance to go live in the weeks leading up to the election.
When it comes to foreign attempts to influence voting, the last few weeks before an election could be the riskiest. That is also the time when voters are most interested in politics and can be most harmed by false information about candidates or the electoral process.
Hackers obtain confidential data from a private network and then release it to the public, news media, or a select group of people in so-called “hack-and-leak” attacks such as the one that the Trump campaign reported. Such assaults have the potential to reveal private data and cast doubt on cybersecurity measures as well as the resilience of vital networks and systems.
According to authorities, an attack on a state or local election office that exposes private data or interferes with election operations would be particularly concerning for the upcoming elections. Even though the information revealed is useless, such an intrusion could erode public confidence in voting. This final scenario is known by experts as a “perception hack,” in which hackers steal data not for its intrinsic value but rather to demonstrate their skills and confuse and frighten their opponents.
Gavin Wilde, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former National Security Council analyst who specializes in cyber threats, said, “That can actually be more of a threat—the spectacle, the marketing this gives foreign adversaries—than the actual hack.”.
In a hack-and-leak that turned the campaign on its head in the closing weeks of 2016, Russian hackers gained access to Hillary Clinton’s campaign emails and eventually stole and leaked some of the most sensitive data.
Artificial intelligence has advanced to the point where it is now easier than ever to produce and disseminate false information. This includes realistic audio and video, which enables hackers to pose as someone and access the systems of their target organization. Still, the reported hack of the Trump campaign supposedly used far less sophisticated methods: an email account with insufficient security measures was accessed.
According to Wilde, although individuals and institutions can adopt precautionary measures to lessen their susceptibility to cyberattacks, nothing can totally eradicate the possibility of such attacks or the possibility that hostile foreign forces will launch campaigns.
He said, “These hacks and leaks are an inevitable cost of living in a digital age.”. Whether you’re a government agency, a campaign, or a company. “.
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From New York, Associated Press writer Ali Swenson contributed to this story.
