US intelligence officials say Iran is to blame for hacks targeting Trump, Biden-Harris campaigns

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials said Monday they were confident that Iran was responsible for the hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, casting the cyber intrusion as part of a brazen and broader effort by Tehran to interfere in American politics and potentially shape the outcome of the election. The assessment from the FBI and other federal agencies was the first time the U.S. government has assigned blame for hacks that have raised anew the threat of foreign election interference and underscored how Iran, in addition to more sophisticated adversaries like Russia and China, remains a top concern. Besides breaching the Trump campaign, officials also believe that Iran tried to hack into the presidential campaign of Kamala Harris. The hacking and similar activities, federal officials said, are meant to sow discord, exploit divisions within American society and possibly to influence the outcome of elections that Iran perceives to be “particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests,” officials said. “We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting Presidential campaigns,” said the statement released by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the allegations as “unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” saying that Iran had neither the motive nor intention to interfere with the election. It challenged the U.S. to provide evidence and said if the U.S. does so, “we will respond accordingly.” The FBI statement was released at a time of significant tensions between Washington and Tehran as the U.S. hopes to halt or limit a threatened retaliatory strike on Israel over the assassination of Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh in Iran. In addition, an Israeli strike last month in southern Beirut killed Hezbollah’s top commander, but while Tehran and Iran-backed Hezbollah have vowed to retaliate, they have not yet launched strikes as diplomatic endeavors and Gaza cease-fire talks continue in Qatar. But it said the intelligence community was confident “the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the Presidential campaigns of both political parties.” At least three staffers in the Biden-Harris campaign were targeted with phishing emails, but investigators have uncovered no evidence the attempt was successful, The Associated Press reported last week. Iran and Russia have employed these tactics not only in the United States during this and prior federal election cycles but also in other countries around the world,” the statement said. U.S. officials have been on high alert in recent election cycles for foreign influence campaigns and outright interference as in 2016, when Russian military intelligence operatives hacked the campaign of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and orchestrated the release of politically damaging emails through the website WikiLeaks. What to know about the 2024 Election Today’s news: Follow live updates Ground Game: Sign up for AP’s weekly politics newsletter AP’s Role: The Associated Press is the most trusted source of information on election night, with a history of accuracy dating to 1848. In 2020, U.S. intelligence officials say, Iran carried out an influence campaign aimed at harming Trump’s reelection bid that was probably approved by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and was the subject of an unusual evening news conference featuring FBI Director Christopher Wray and other officials. The source — an AOL email account identified only as “Robert” — passed along what appeared to be a research dossier the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Sen. JD Vance. The report also cited an instance of an Iranian military intelligence unit in June sending “a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.” In a separate report, Google said an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard has tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to President Joe Biden and Trump since May. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://apnews.com/52641cd66412d7c01d73876acab3d989