Former President Donald Trump’s The presidential campaign announced the hack on Saturday and suggested Iranian actors were involved in the theft and distribution of classified internal documents.
The campaign did not provide any concrete evidence of Iranian involvement, but the allegations were made by Microsoft The report was issued Details of attempts by foreign agents to interfere 2024 US Campaign.
The report cited an instance in June when Iranian military intelligence units “sent spear phishing emails to senior members of the presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior adviser.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Chang blamed the hack on “foreign sources hostile to the United States.” The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press on Saturday.
Politico first reported on the hack on Saturday. The outlet reported that people began receiving emails from an anonymous account on July 22. The source, an AOL email account identified only as “Robert,” handed over what appeared to be a dossier of a campaign investigation into the Ohio senator and Republican vice presidential candidate. J.D. VanceThe document was dated February 23, about five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
“These documents were obtained illegally” and were “intended to interfere in the 2024 elections and cause chaos in the entire Democratic Party electoral process,” Chang said.
He pointed to a Microsoft report released on Friday and its conclusion that “Iranian hackers compromised the accounts of ‘senior’ officials in the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024, roughly coinciding with the time period when President Trump would be selecting his running mate.”
“Iran knows that President Trump will end their reign of terror just as he did during his first four years in the White House,” Chang said, warning that “media and outlets that reprint documents and internal communications are following the orders of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
In response to Microsoft’s report, Iran’s UN mission denied it had any plans to interfere in the US presidential election or launch cyber attacks.
Chan did not immediately respond to questions about his interactions with Microsoft on the matter. Microsoft said on Saturday Blog Post And Friday Report.
In its report, Microsoft said that “foreign malign influence efforts regarding the 2024 U.S. elections began slowly but have steadily accelerated over the past six months, driven initially by Russian activity and more recently by Iranian activity.”
The analysis continues: “Iranian cyber influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the past three U.S. election cycles. Iranian activity is distinctive from Russian campaigns because it emerged later in the election season and launched cyber attacks that were focused on electioneering rather than voter mobilization.”
“Recent activity suggests that the Iranian regime, as well as the Kremlin, may be involved in the 2024 elections,” Microsoft concluded.
Specifically, the report details that in June 2024, Iranian military intelligence unit Mint-Sandstorm sent phishing emails to the U.S. presidential campaign via the compromised account of a former adviser.
“The phishing emails contain fake forwarding with hyperlinks to direct traffic to attacker-controlled domains that then redirect to the stated domain,” the report said.
vice president Kamala Harris The campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the reported hack or the Democratic candidate’s cybersecurity protocols.
