(Headline USA) Google said Wednesday that an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard has tried since May to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and former Democrat candidate Joe Biden.
The admission follows a recent revelation from the Trump campaign that hackers had succeeded in infiltrating it and had sent sensitive information to several media outlets, including Politico, the Washington Post and the New York Times—all of which thus far have opted not to release the material due to potential legal liabilities.
The echoes of the 2016 race, when many claimed—without evidence—that Russia had hacked the Democratic National Committee and several accounts linked to the Hillary Clinton campaign, threatened to turn the tables on the Left’s years of panickmongering about foreign influence, particularly in light of the Biden–Harris administration’s soft stance toward Iran.
The hacking comes less than a year after the Biden-Harris administration granted Iran access to $16 billion in previously frozen assets, which it likely used to help support Hamas’s Oct. 7 sneak attack and massacre against Israel.
Both Biden and Harris have been ambivalent in their relations with America’s closest Mideast ally, even as Iran’s direct hostilities against Israel, and its in-kind response, have ratcheted up tensions significantly in the region.
The news also follows recent reports that Iran may have hired paid hitmen to enter the U.S. through Mexico and target former Trump administration officials. The Department of Homeland Security identified one such mercenary, a Pakistani national.
Google, meanwhile, has been exposed for promoting and colluding with the campaign of current Democrat nominee Kamala Harris in several key areas:
- redirecting search results for Trump to Harris’s campaign webpage
- suppressing information about the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump
- allowing Harris to alter the headlines of outside news articles that appeared in paid promotional ads
It is unclear whether the tech giant might have aided Iran’s efforts to hack into Trump’s campaign.
Google’s threat intelligence arm said the Iranian group was still actively targeting people associated with Trump, Biden and Harris. It said those targeted have included current and former government officials, as well as presidential campaign affiliates.
The new report from Google’s Threat Analysis Group affirms and expanded on a Microsoft report released Friday that revealed suspected Iranian cyber intrusion in this year’s U.S. presidential election.
It shed light on how foreign adversaries were ramping up their efforts to disrupt the election, which is now less than three months away.
Google’s report said its threat researchers detected and disrupted a “small but steady cadence” of the Iranian attackers using email credential phishing—a type of cyberattack where the attacker poses as a trusted sender to try to get an email recipient to share their login details.
John Hultquist, chief analyst for the company’s threat intelligence arm, said the company sends suspected targets of these attacks a Gmail popup that warns them that a government-backed attacker might be trying to steal their password.
Some have suggested that Republican impressario Roger Stone was the initial victim of the Trump hacking—while possibly relying on an AOL account.
“You could see why the Iranians would be opposed to Donald Trump’s return to the White House,” Stone told Newsmax on Tuesday.
"You could see why the Iranians would be opposed to Donald Trump's return to the White House."
Roger Stone responds to reports that his personal emails were hacked by Iran while targeting the Trump campaign on Tuesday's "Newsline." @RogerJStoneJr @BiancaDLGarza pic.twitter.com/6pmKP9WtnK
— NEWSMAX (@NEWSMAX) August 13, 2024
Google’s report said its security team had observed the Iran-linked group gaining access to one high-profile political consultant’s personal Gmail account.
It reported the incident to the FBI in July. Microsoft’s Friday report had shared similar information, noting that the email account of a former senior adviser to a presidential campaign (presumably Stone) had been compromised and weaponized to send a phishing email to a high-ranking campaign official.
The group is familiar to Google’s threat intelligence arm and other researchers, and this isn’t the first time it has tried to interfere in U.S. elections, Hultquist said.
The report noted that the same Iranian group targeted both the Biden and Trump campaigns with phishing attacks during the 2020 cycle, as early as June of that year.
The group also has been prolific in other cyber espionage activity, particularly in the Middle East, the report said.
In recent months, as the Israel–Hamas War has aggravated tensions in the region, that activity has included email phishing campaigns targeted at Israeli diplomats, academics, non-governmental organizations and military affiliates.
While the Trump campaign hasn’t provided specific evidence linking Iran to the hack, both Trump and Stone have said they were contacted by Microsoft related to suspected cyber intrusions.
Google and Microsoft wouldn’t identify the people targeted in the Iranian intrusion attempts or confirm that Stone was among them. Google did confirm that the Iranian group in its report, which it calls APT42, is the same as the one in Microsoft’s research. Microsoft refers to the group as Mint Sandstorm.
Harris’s campaign, which has been up and running for less than a month, declined to say whether it has identified any state-based intrusion attempts, but has said it vigilantly monitors cyber threats and isn’t aware of any security breaches of its systems.
The FBI on Monday confirmed that it was investigating the intrusion of the Trump campaign. Two people familiar with the matter said the FBI also was investigating attempts to gain access to the Biden–Harris campaign.
While neither Microsoft nor Google specified Iran’s intentions in the U.S. presidential race, U.S. officials have previously hinted that Iran particularly opposes Trump. U.S. officials also have expressed alarm about Tehran’s efforts to seek retaliation for a 2020 strike on an Iranian general that was ordered by Trump.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations, when asked about the claim of the Trump campaign, denied being involved.
“We do not accord any credence to such reports,” the mission told the Associated Press. “The Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election.”
The mission did not immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday about Google’s report.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
