Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said his campaign had been hacked and suggested Iranian actors were involved in stealing and distributing sensitive internal documents. | Photo credit: AP
Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign said on Saturday (August 10, 2024) that it had been hacked and suggested that Iranian actors were involved in stealing and distributing sensitive internal documents.
The campaign did not provide any specific evidence of Iran’s involvement, but the claim came a day after Microsoft released a report detailing efforts by foreign agents to interfere in the US campaign in 2024.
It cited an example of an Iranian military intelligence unit sending “a spear-phishing email from the compromised email account of a former senior adviser to a high-ranking presidential campaign official” in June.
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blamed “foreign sources hostile to the United States” for the hacking. The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. AP,
Politico first reported the hacking on Saturday. The outlet reported that it began receiving emails from an anonymous account on July 22. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — delivered a research dossier that the campaign had done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. The document was dated February 23, nearly five months before Trump picked Vance as his running mate.
Mr. Cheung said “these documents were obtained illegally” and “were intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos in our democratic process.”
He pointed to a Microsoft report released on Friday and its findings that “Iranian hackers breached the account of a high-ranking official associated with the US presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the timing of President Trump’s selection of his vice presidential candidate.”
“The Iranians know that President Trump will stop their reign of terror, just as he did in his first four years in the White House,” Mr. Cheung said, warning that “any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications is acting at the behest of America’s enemies and doing exactly what they want.”
In response to Microsoft’s report, Iran’s UN mission denied that it had any plans to interfere in the US presidential election or launch a cyberattack.
Mr. Cheung did not immediately respond to questions about the campaign’s discussions with Microsoft on the matter. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. AP,
Microsoft said in its report on Friday that “foreign malign influence in connection with the 2024 U.S. election began slowly but has accelerated over the past six months, initially driven by Russian operations but more recently by Iranian activity.”
The analysis continued: “Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the past three U.S. election cycles. Iran’s campaigns have been notable and distinct from Russian campaigns because they appear later in the election season and conduct more cyberattacks aimed at election operations than at influencing voters.” “Recent activity suggests that the Iranian regime — along with the Kremlin — may be equally involved in the 2024 election,” Microsoft concluded.
Specifically, the report detailed that in June 2024, Mint Sandstorm, an Iranian military intelligence unit, sent a phishing email to the US presidential campaign through the compromised account of a former adviser.
“The phishing emails included a fake forward with a hyperlink that directed traffic through an actor-controlled domain before redirecting to the listed domains,” the report said.
Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the alleged hacking or the Democratic candidate’s cybersecurity protocols.