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On Wednesday (14), Google issued a warning about the US presidential elections. The big tech company claims that Iran is carrying out a hacking operation aimed at the presidential candidates’ campaigns.
Google issued the warning in May (Image: Alex Dudar/Unsplash)
Additionally, the search giant says the hack would be more widespread than previously known, as hackers would be targeting email accounts of US officials and people associated with Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
Iran has reportedly attacked high-profile targets before, according to Google
According to the company, in May and June, a group of hackers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attempted to attack the personal emails of about a dozen people associated with Biden and Trump, including government officials; Even today, Google is witnessing unsuccessful attempts by these Iranian hackers to log into the accounts of associates of Trump, Biden, and Harris, as well as the accounts of both Trump and Harris’ presidential campaigns; In addition to this alleged attack, there is other evidence of strong attempts by Iran to obtain intelligence on the 2024 US presidential campaign, CNN reports; This week, several outlets reported that alleged Iranian hackers breached the personal email of former Republican operative Roger Stone, aiming to infiltrate the Trump campaign; According to Google, the hackers successfully hacked the personal Gmail account of “a high-profile political consultant,” but a company spokesperson would not confirm who that person was (perhaps Stone or someone else).
The company, however, reported that it passed information about the Iranian hacking operation to US authorities in early July and continues to cooperate.
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Gmail was targeted by Iranians (Image Mojahid Mottakin/Shutterstock)
Additionally, Google reportedly told both presidential campaigns that it is “observing heightened malicious activity originating from foreign state actors” and emphasized “the importance of enhanced account security protections on personal email accounts.”
Harris and Trump’s positioning
On Tuesday (14), Harris’ campaign confirmed that it had been the target of a “foreign hacker influence operation,” but indicated that it was “not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from these efforts.”
With less than 100 days until the election, it is clear that our foreign adversaries are intensely interested in disrupting our democratic process.
Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, in a statement
The alleged attack on Trump’s campaign in May and June caused confusion within the campaign, FBI and Microsoft, which detected the cyberattack attempts, aiming to contain the incident and determine whether there was a broader cyber threat from Iran.
In a report, Microsoft said the hack targeted an undisclosed presidential campaign. A pseudonymous email account also leaked documents from Trump’s campaign, but it is not known whether the two events are related.
The former president’s campaign blames Iran for the leak, however, the US government has not officially identified who is responsible so far.
Iran denied the allegations. “The Iranian government does not have or harbor any intention or motive to interfere in the US presidential election,” said a spokesman for Iran’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations.
“Iran has the capability and the intent” to target the U.S. election with influence operations, said William Evanina, a former director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center. And Tehran is willing to take risks that other governments might not, he said.
“I think they’re going to be aggressive for the next 90 days, for sure,” Evanina said, referring to the time remaining before the election, which will be held on Nov. 5.
