WASHINGTON (AP) — The same Iranian hacker group that is believed to have Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns attempted to access the WhatsApp accounts of employees of the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Meta Platforms said on Friday.
Meta said It discovered the hackers’ networkwho posed as technical support representatives for companies such as AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google after people who received the suspicious WhatsApp messages reported them. Meta investigators linked the activity to the same network blamed for the hacking attack reported by the Trump campaign.
The FBI this week said 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.
In a statement on Friday, Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said the hackers attempted to attack the WhatsApp accounts of people 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 monthGoogle’s threat intelligence division said the same Iranian group it linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard had been trying to infiltrate the personal email accounts of about a dozen people linked to Biden and Trump since May. That report complemented a separate study released by Microsoft a few days earlier that uncovered a suspected Iranian cyberattack targeting this year’s presidential election.
US intelligence agencies say Iran increasingly aggressive The use of cyberattacks and disinformation has several motives: to confuse and polarize voters to undermine faith in U.S. democracy; to erode support for Israel; and to oppose candidates it believes will escalate tensions between Washington and Iran.
Iran has vowed revenge on Trump, whose government ended the nuclear agreement with Iranre-imposed sanctions and ordered killing an Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
In July, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, said the Iranian government had provided covert support for American protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Iran-linked groups posed as online activists, encouraging Protests on campus and financially supported some protest groups, Haines said.
Messages left with Trump and Harris’ campaign teams were not immediately returned Friday.
