Are foreign hackers interfering in the race between Donald Trump and Kamal Harris? The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating possible cyber attacks on both campaign teams.
The FBI is investigating a possible hacker attack on internal communications from Donald Trump’s campaign team. The US federal police confirmed this upon request. The Washington Post reports, citing people familiar with the situation, that the FBI is also investigating a possible hacker attack on the campaign team of the Democratic opposition to the Republican presidential candidate.
According to the US broadcaster NBC, the investigation includes hacker attacks on three employees of the Democratic campaign and on Roger Stone, a former adviser to Trump. However, it is not clear whether the attacks on the Democratic campaigners were successful. “Our campaign monitors and protects against cyber threats, and we are not aware of any breaches of our systems,” NBC quoted a representative of US Vice President Kamala Harris’ team as saying.
Stone told the Washington Post that he had been informed by authorities that his email account had been compromised.
Trump team blames “hostile foreign” hackers
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.
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The Trump team also did not provide any direct evidence of a hack by Iranian actors to Politico. 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 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.
