A hacker group known as APT42 and linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has targeted high-ranking officials and organizations in Israel and the United States, including government officials and political campaigns, according to a report published by Google.
Harris’ campaign announced Tuesday that it had been the target of a hacker attack. A few days earlier, the Trump campaign claimed it had been attacked by Iranian hackers.
A Harris campaign official told the AFP news agency that in July, the campaign’s legal and security teams received a notification from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that the campaign had been hacked. But the official said the campaign has strong cyber security measures in place and there is no indication that hackers have managed to breach the campaign’s security systems.
Google’s report says that Google’s threat analysis team continues to observe failed attempts by APT42 to compromise the personal accounts of individuals associated with President Joe Biden, Harris and Trump. The hacker group works by gathering information about the target audience and tailoring phishing attempts to trick victims into accessing information such as Gmail accounts.
“Google” stated that it foiled the attempts of APT42 to hack the campaigns of Biden and Trump in 2020.
In May and June of this year, an Iranian hacker group targeted about ten personal email accounts of people associated with Biden or Trump, and Google blocked several attempts by APT42 to access such accounts.
Google also reported that hackers managed to gain access to the personal Gmail account of an influential political consultant.
The company warned that APT42 is a persistent threat and there is no sign that the group will stop its attacks. “This spring and summer, they demonstrated the ability to run multiple simultaneous phishing campaigns, specifically targeting Israel and the United States,” Google said, urging politicians and others connected to the upcoming election to remain vigilant and take advantage of the company’s enhanced defenses.
The US State Department on Monday warned Iran of consequences for meddling in the election after the Trump campaign said it had been hacked. The Trump campaign has suggested that Iran was behind a hacking attack that sent private documents to journalists and called on the media not to publish them, saying that doing so would be supporting America’s enemies.
2024-08-15 20:53:38