U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, have revealed that Iranian hackers have persisted in their attempts to influence the 2024 presidential election, sending “stolen” data from Trump’s campaign to people linked to Biden’s campaign prior to Biden’s withdrawal from the race.
“Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails,” a statement issued by U.S. intelligence agencies said Wednesday.
Authorities have stated that they do not have any evidence that the recipients responded.
Further, the FBI discovered that Iranian officials have “continued their efforts” to provide media outlets with “stolen” campaign materials.
The Trump campaign received internal campaign materials as a result of Iran’s June phishing attack, which targeted both the Biden and Trump campaigns.
The FBI, CISA, and ODNI issued a warning about this endeavor in the middle of August, and the agencies say it is still going strong as of right now.
“This malicious cyber activity is the latest example of Iran’s multi-pronged approach, as noted in the joint August statement, to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our electoral process,” according to investigators.
The FBI has been monitoring this behavior, communicating with victims, and will keep investigating and gathering information to disrupt the threat actors. They are leading the threat response effort. The number of efforts by foreign players to influence the next November election is on the rise.
The Trump campaign issued a statement on Wednesday demanding additional details regarding the intelligence agencies’ conclusions from the Biden-Harris administration.
“If Kamala and Biden utilized the compromised information that the Iranians provided them with to harm President Trump, they must face the music. At what point did they become aware of this information? Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt stated in a news release.
Campaign spokesperson for Harris-Walz Morgan Finkelstein stated, “We have cooperated with the appropriate law enforcement authorities since we were made aware that individuals associated with the then-Biden campaign were among the intended victims of this foreign influence operation.”
“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” according to Finkelstein. “We condemn in the strongest terms any effort by foreign actors to interfere in U.S. elections including this unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”
In 2024, the most influential influencers, according to intelligence services, will be Russia, China, and Iran.
The Iranian mission to the UN issued a statement Wednesday discrediting the intelligence analysts’ conclusions, calling them “fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”
“The Islamic Republic of Iran does not engage in the internal uproars or electoral controversies of the United States,” according to the statement.