Iran behind Trump campaign hack, US intelligence says

US intelligence agencies have confirmed that Iran orchestrated a cyberattack against former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

In a joint statement, the intelligence community said it is “confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties.”

The statement was signed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

It said that efforts to compromise former President Trump’s campaign were part of “increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle” that aims to “stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions.”

The statement named Russia alongside Iran as another actor employing similar tactics, including thefts and disclosures, to try and influence the US election process. It said a similar approach was employed in earlier federal election cycles and elsewhere in the world.

“As the lead for threat response, the FBI has been tracking this activity, has been in contact with the victims, and will continue to investigate and gather information in order to pursue and disrupt the threat actors responsible,” the statement read.

The Trump campaign said it was hacked earlier this month and blamed Iran after Politico reported it was receiving emails from an anonymous account containing documents from the campaign.

Politico said the sender used an AOL email account and went by the name of “Robert,” sharing what appeared to be internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official over a couple of weeks.

The sender claimed they possessed legal documents, internal campaign debates, and other material.

Just last week, OpenAI said that it banned Iranian ChatGPT accounts that were generating fake US election content in what appears to be another instance of Iran’s efforts to meddle in the American voting process.

The accounts in question have been linked to an Iranian misinformation influence operation dubbed Storm-2035. Microsoft researchers first identified it in a series of reports released in April, June, and again earlier in August.

Microsoft said in the latest report that it had observed the emergence of “significant influence activity” by Iranian actors over the past several months. It also said that Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations targeted “at least the last three” US election cycles.