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US intelligence officials said Iran was behind the recent hacking of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and has tried to compromise the Biden-Harris campaign as part of Tehran’s “increasingly aggressive” attempts to interfere in the election.
In a statement on Monday, the FBI and two other US agencies said Iran perceived the November vote to be “particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests” and was attempting to interfere in US politics through both hacking and influence operations.
The statement confirmed claims made earlier this month by the Trump campaign that a number of its internal emails had been hacked by Iran. Victims also appear to include longtime Trump ally Roger Stone, who last week told US media he had been notified by authorities that his personal email accounts had been compromised.
The agencies said Iran also sought “access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties” through “social engineering” — tricking victims into sharing sensitive information.
“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” they added. “Iran seeks to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions”
Confirmation that Iran was behind the hack came on the first day of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the party will formally select Kamala Harris as its White House nominee, less than three months to go until the presidential election. A Harris campaign official said last week that the vice-president’s campaign had “robust cyber security measures in place”.
The latest intervention from the intelligence community also comes as President Joe Biden and his administration are trying to stop Iran from launching another attack on Israel while attempting to broker a ceasefire deal to stop the war in Gaza and free the hostages held by Hamas.
It marks the latest sign that Iranian state-backed actors are ramping up their efforts to meddle in the election. US authorities have previously indicated that Iran does not want another Trump White House in a bid to avoid increased tensions with America, while analysts also note that Tehran remains angry at the former president for the 2020 assassination of military leader Qasem Soleimani.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said earlier this month that the Iranians “know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror just like he did in his first four years in the White House”.
Trump has vowed that if he wins the election, he will take a tough stance against Iran and stand in the way of Tehran acquiring a nuclear weapon. In 2018 Trump pulled out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal that the US had signed during the Obama administration, and reimposed sanctions on Tehran.
Representatives from the Trump and Harris campaigns declined to comment.
Microsoft earlier this month detailed its own findings of a hacking attempt on a presidential campaign led by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in June, as well as a disinformation campaign run by another Iranian group that involved the creation of “covert news sites” targeting US voters.
OpenAI also said that its ChatGPT tool had been used in the disinformation campaign for generating articles and comments on topics including the conflict in Gaza, Israel’s presence at the Olympics and the US election.
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