Politics USA: Iran behind hacker attacks on election campaign teams

US intelligence agencies blame Iran for hacking into the internal communications of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign team.

"We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity this election cycle, particularly aimed at influencing the American public and conducting cyber operations against presidential elections," according to a joint statement from the Office of Defense Intelligence Coordination (ODNI), the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (Cisa) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This also applies to the recently reported activities to "compromise the campaign of former President Trump", which are attributed to Iran.

Dossier on Vice Candidate Vance surfaced

The FBI announced last week that it was investigating possible hacker access to internal communications of Trump's election campaign team. A 271-page internal dossier on Trump's vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance is said to have been leaked to US media. One of the purposes of such dossiers in the US election campaign is to be better prepared for political attacks from the other side. Trump's spokesperson spoke of a hack in this context. The election campaign team of US Vice President Kamala Harris also announced that it had been the target of a foreign cyber attack.

US secret services: Iran trying to foment discord

The joint statement from the ODNI, Cisa and FBI went on to say that the Iranians had attempted to gain access to individuals with direct links to the Democratic and Republican campaign teams. "These activities, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the U.S. election process." Iran is trying to "foment discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions". The Vance dossier was not explicitly mentioned in the statement.

Iran views the presidential election on November 5 as particularly consequential in terms of its national security interests, the US intelligence services warned. This increases Tehran's tendency to "influence the outcome".

The intelligence services also pointed out that the approach was not new. Iran and Russia have used this tactic not only in the US during this and previous election cycles, but also in other countries around the world. "We do not condone foreign efforts to influence or disrupt our elections, including the targeting of American political campaigns," it said.

Google with similar findings

Last week, IT security experts at Google also reported that a hacker group affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had attempted to gain access to the email accounts of US Democratic and Republican candidate Trump's campaign staff. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards are the elite military force of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The hacker group, known as APT42, is said to have accessed the personal emails of around a dozen high-ranking employees from the Democratic and Republican campaign camps in May and June. At the time, US President Joe Biden was still the likely Democratic presidential candidate, but after his withdrawal, Vice President Harris is now running against Trump.