Former President Donald Trump’s The US presidential campaign announced on Saturday that it had been hacked and suggested that Iranian actors were involved within the theft and distribution of sensitive internal documents.
The campaign didn’t provide concrete evidence of Iran’s involvement, however the claim comes a day after Microsoft issued a report describes the attempts of foreign agents to interfere within the US campaign in 2024.
As an example, a case was cited through which a unit of Iranian military intelligence sent “a spear-phishing email to a senior presidential campaign official from a compromised email account of a former senior adviser” in June.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blamed the hack on “foreign sources hostile to the United States.” The National Security Council didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Saturday.
Politico first reported on the hack on Saturday, saying it received emails from an anonymous account on July 22. The source – an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” – apparently forwarded a research dossier the campaign had apparently created on the Republican vice presidential candidate, the senator from Ohio. JD VanceThe document was dated February 23, nearly five months before Trump selected Vance as his vice presidential running mate.
“These documents were obtained illegally” and “intended to influence the 2024 elections and create chaos in our democratic process,” Cheung said.
He referred to Microsoft’s report released on Friday and its conclusions that “Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘senior official’ in the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides closely with President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential candidate.”
“The Iranians know that President Trump will end their reign of terror, just as he did in his first four years in the White House,” Cheung said, adding a warning: “Any media or news organization that reprints documents or internal communications is acting in the interests of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
In response to Microsoft’s report, the Iranian mission to the United Nations denied that the corporate had any plans to interfere within the US presidential election or launch cyberattacks on it.
Cheung didn’t immediately reply to questions on the campaign’s interactions with Microsoft on the matter. Microsoft said Saturday it had no comment on its Blog post and Friday report.
In that report, Microsoft stated that “malicious foreign influence on the 2024 U.S. election began slowly but has steadily increased over the past six months, initially driven by Russian activity, but more recently by Iranian activity.”
The evaluation continues: “Iranian cyber influence operations have been a staple of at least the last three U.S. election cycles. Iran’s operations were notable and differed from Russian campaigns in that they occurred later in the election cycle and used cyberattacks aimed at voting behavior rather than voter influence.”
“Recent activity suggests that the Iranian regime – alongside the Kremlin – may be equally involved in the 2024 elections,” Microsoft concluded.
Specifically, the report detailed that an Iranian military intelligence unit, Mint Sandstorm, sent a phishing email to an American presidential campaign team in June 2024 using the compromised account of a former adviser.
“The phishing email contained a fake redirect with a hyperlink that routes traffic through a domain controlled by the actor before redirecting to the listed domain,” the report said.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ The campaign team didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment on the reported hacking attacks or the Democratic candidate’s cybersecurity protocols.
