The same Iranian hacker group that allegedly targeted both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns attempted to gain access to the WhatsApp accounts of employees of the administrations of U.S. President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Meta Platforms reported on Friday.
Meta said the hacker network was reported by recipients of suspicious WhatsApp messages. The hackers posed as technical support employees of companies such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.
Meta investigators linked the activity to the same network blamed for the hacking attack reported by Trump’s campaign.
The FBI said this week that an Iranian hacking of the Trump campaign and an attempted break-in into the Biden-Harris campaign were part of a broader Iranian effort to interfere in the U.S. presidential election.
A statement from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said on Friday that the hackers attempted to target the WhatsApp accounts of individuals in the Middle East, the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as political and diplomatic officials – including unidentified officials from the Trump and Biden administrations.
A “small group” of accounts have been blocked by Meta, the company said.
“We have not seen any evidence that the targeted WhatsApp accounts were compromised, but out of an abundance of caution, we are sharing our findings publicly and also sharing information with law enforcement and our industry colleagues,” Meta said in a statement.
In a report this month, Google’s threat intelligence division said the same Iranian group that Google links to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has attempted to infiltrate the personal email accounts of about a dozen people with ties to Biden and Trump since May.
This report complemented a study published by Microsoft a few days earlier that uncovered a suspected Iranian cyberattack on this year’s presidential election.
U.S. intelligence officials say Iran’s increasingly aggressive use of cyberattacks and disinformation has several motives: to confuse and polarize voters to undermine faith in U.S. democracy, weaken support for Israel and combat candidates believed to be likely to escalate tensions between Washington and Iran.
Iran has vowed revenge on Trump, whose administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, reimposed sanctions and ordered the killing of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
In July, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the Iranian government had secretly supported US protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Iran-linked groups posed as online activists, encouraged protests on campus and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said. – AP
