A few months before the US election, reporters were allegedly given access to internal communications from the Trump team. Are foreign hackers interfering in the election campaign?
The FBI is investigating a possible hacker attack on the internal communications of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign team. The US federal police confirmed this upon request. The Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the situation, that the FBI is also investigating a possible hacker attack on the Democratic opposition’s campaign team.
The news portal “Politico” was the first to report on the case at the weekend. According to the report, Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung spoke of a hack after the online portal received several emails from a sender named “Robert” that contained internal communications from the campaign team. The “Washington Post” said it had been contacted in a similar way. A 271-page internal dossier on Trump’s vice presidential candidate JD Vance is said to have been leaked to the US media. Such dossiers serve, among other things, the purpose of being better prepared for political attacks from the opposing side in the US election campaign.
According to Politico, the Trump team blamed “foreign actors hostile to the United States” for the cyberattack and cited a threat analysis by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, which, among other things, deals with alleged Iranian interference in the US election campaign. The report states that a group linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard – the elite military force of the Islamic Republic – broke into the account of a former high-ranking member of a campaign team and used it to send so-called spear phishing emails. However, Microsoft did not identify any specific people or parties in the report.
The Trump team also did not provide Politico with any direct evidence of a hack by Iranian actors. The Washington Post, citing informants familiar with the situation, said that the FBI suspects Iranian actors behind the cyberattacks, but it is less clear whether the same groups also sent the emails to the US journalists. CNN reported, citing a source familiar with the matter, that federal police had informed the team of US President Joe Biden – who has since made way for Kamala Harris in the election campaign – in June of the risk of possible Iranian cyberattacks. However, the FBI did not mention Iran in its statement on the investigation.
Source: Stern
I have been working in the news industry for over 6 years, first as a reporter and now as an editor. I have covered politics extensively, and my work has appeared in major newspapers and online news outlets around the world. In addition to my writing, I also contribute regularly to 24 Hours World.
