WASHINGTON — The same Iranian hacker group is said to have both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns attempted to obtain the WhatsApp accounts of employees of the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Meta Platforms reported Friday.
Meta said it discovered the network of hackersposing as tech support agents for companies including AOL, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google, after individuals who received the suspicious WhatsApp messages reported them. Meta’s researchers linked the activity to the same network blamed for the hacking incident reported by the Trump campaign.
The FBI This Week said an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign and an attempted break-in into the Biden-Harris campaign were part of a broader Iranian effort to influence the US presidential election.
A statement Friday from Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, said the hackers had 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 associated with the Trump and Biden administrations. A “small cluster” of accounts were blocked by Meta, the company said.
“We have not seen any evidence that the targeted WhatsApp accounts have been compromised, but as a precaution, we are sharing our findings publicly, in addition to sharing information with law enforcement and our industry peers,” Meta said in a statement.
In a report this monthGoogle’s threat intelligence unit said the same Iranian group it linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard had attempted to infiltrate the personal email accounts of about a dozen people linked to Biden and Trump since May. That report built on a separate investigation released days earlier by Microsoft that revealed suspected Iranian cyber intrusion into 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 in an effort to undermine confidence in American democracy, to erode support for Israel, and to oppose candidates seen as likely to increase tensions between Washington and Iran.
Iran has vowed revenge against Trump, whose administration ended a nuclear deal with Iranre-imposed sanctions and ordered the to kill of an Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
In July, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines said the Iranian government was providing covert support to American protests against Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. Groups with ties to Iran posed as online activists, encouraged campus protests and provided financial support to some protest groups, Haines said.
Messages left with the Trump and Harris campaigns were not immediately returned Friday.