Iran hacked the Trump campaign, sought to impress the Biden team, the FBI said

Iranian hackers seeking to impress US President Joe Biden’s campaign with information stolen from the campaign of Donald Trump’s rival sent unsolicited emails to people associated with the Democratic candidate in an attempt to disrupt the 2024 election, the FBI and other government agencies said Wednesday.

The emails were obtained before the hacking of the Trump campaign was publicly acknowledged, and there is no evidence that the recipients of the emails knew their origin.

There is no indication that any of the recipients have responded, officials said, and several media organizations that came forward over the summer with the stolen leaked information also said they did not.

In a statement, Harris campaign spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said the campaign has been cooperating with law enforcement since they discovered that people connected to the Biden team were among the recipients of the emails.

“We are not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few people have had their personal emails targeted in what appears to be spam or a criminal attempt to steal sensitive information,” Finkelstein said. “We strongly condemn any attempt by foreign actors to interfere in the US election, including this malicious and unacceptable activity.”

It follows recent allegations of Russian meddling

Trump’s campaign national press secretary Caroline Leavitt called the effort to suppress information stolen from the Biden campaign “further evidence that the Iranians interfered in the election” to help Harris.

But the apparent lack of response to requests will spark uncomfortable comparisons of Trump’s campaign to the past two presidential contests.

A bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report in 2020 found that former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort colluded with Russians before, during and after the election four years ago, when Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton.

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The report also found that, “Trump and senior campaign officials wanted to get early information about the planned release of WikiLeaks.” WikiLeaks published thousands of hacked emails from the Clinton campaign, leading to a smear campaign against the Democrat.

That report followed a two-year investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, which revealed several examples of Trump’s team accepting help from Russia in the election campaign, although Mueller stopped short of alleging collusion.

Trump, who has not been personally interviewed about the report, told ABC News during his 2020 re-election bid that there was nothing wrong with eavesdropping, if foreign officials were providing “information about your opponent.”

US officials in recent months have used criminal charges, sanctions and public hearings to detail actions taken by foreign adversaries to influence the election, including a case targeting Russia’s covert effort to distribute Russian content to US audiences.

‘Robert,’ uses an AOL account

In this case, the hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people associated with the Biden campaign before he resigned. The emails “contain an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public materials from former president Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” according to a statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. .

The organizations said the hacking of the Trump campaign and the efforts to hack the Biden-Harris campaign were part of an effort to undermine voter confidence in the election and create tension.

The Trump campaign disclosed on August 10 that it had been hacked and that Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets – Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post – have been leaked classified material from within the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to divulge details about their findings.

Politico reported that it first received emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — forwarded what appears to be a draft of research the campaign apparently conducted on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio. The document is dated February 23, nearly five months before Trump chose Vance as his running mate.

Intelligence officials say Iran opposes Trump’s re-election, seeing him as potentially increasing tensions between Washington and Tehran. The Trump administration ended the nuclear deal with Iran, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, an action that prompted Iran’s leaders to vow revenge.

Tech executives say it’s a ‘very dangerous’ time before the election

Iran’s interference in the Trump campaign was cited as one of the cyberattack and anti-virus campaigns cited by tech companies and national security officials at Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate intelligence committee, with efforts from Russia and China also cited. Executives from Meta, Google and Microsoft briefed lawmakers on their security plans, as well as the attacks they’ve seen so far.

“The most dangerous time I think will come 48 hours before the election,” Microsoft president Brad Smith told lawmakers during the hearing, which focused on the efforts of American technology companies to protect the election from foreign information and computer attacks.

Democratic Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, who chairs the panel, agreed with Smith but said the 48 hours after polls close on Nov. 5 could be “equally if not more,” especially if the election is close.

Elon Musk’s UX was invited to testify but declined, several senators said.

TikTok was not invited to participate, according to a company spokesperson.