Iran-Aligned Hackers Targeting Trump, Harris Election Campaign: Google

Google confirmed that hackers backed by Iran are targeting US Presidential campaigns. It is said that a hacker group known as “APT42” linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps went after high-profile individuals and organizations in Israel and the United States. The list includes government officials and political campaign including Donald Trump’s and Kamala Harris’, as per the threat report by Google.

Google said it disrupted the APT42 attempted to hack the campaigns of Biden and Trump in 2020.

Days after reports of hacking of Trump campaign, Kamala Harris’ campaign also came forward saying it had been targeted by foreign hackers.

“In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation. We have robust cybersecurity measures in place and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts” a Harris campaign official told AFP.

Google’s threat analysis group continues to see unsuccessful attempts from APT42 to compromise personal accounts of individuals affiliated with President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, said the report.

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The hackers usually work by gleaning information about the targets. They tailor “phishing” efforts to dupe victims into revealing a log-in information for accounts like Gmail.

Goggle report gave examples of posing as a think tank or other credible contact to attract victims to fake video meeting landing pages, where log-in credentials are needed to take part.

While the technical tools abound in hacker arsenals, some goes for “social engineering” tactics that trick people into clicking on booby-trapped links or logging in to realistic replicas of legitimate web pages.

As per the report, in May and June this year, the Iranian hacker group’s targets included personal email accounts of nearly a dozen affiliated with Biden or Trump, and Google blocked numerous attempts by APT42.

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It said the group got into the personal Gmail account of an influential political consultant. “APT42 is a sophisticated, persistent threat actor and they show no signs of stopping their attempts to target users and deploy novel tactics”, said Google.

The report also added that the group have shown the ability to run several simultaneous phishing campaigns, particularly on Israel and the US.

Google urged the high-risk individuals associated with the upcoming election to be vigilant and to take advantage of the ramped-up defences offered by the internet firm.

The US State Department warned Iran on the consequences over election interference following the Trump campaign’s announcement that it had been hacked.