For the past several months, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) has been issuing reports on how it has detected efforts by state-run actors that are trying to influence the 2024 US Presidential Election. The last such report made headlines when the company stated that Iran-based actors had accessed the email account belonging to a member of an unnamed US Presidential campaign. Soon afterward, the campaign to elect Donald Trump as president stated that it had been hacked, but Microsoft never confirmed if its report was about the Trump campaign.
Today, the MTAC team released its latest report, and it states that two known Russia-based state actors, known as Storm-1516 and Storm-1679, are specifically targeting the campaign to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz as President and Vice-President.
In a blog post, Microsoft stated that Storm-1516 created two false videos both of which generated millions of views online. The blog post stated:
One video depicted an attack by alleged Harris supporters on a supposed Trump rally attendee, while another used an on-screen actor to fabricate false claims about Harris’s involvement in a hit-and-run accident. This second video was laundered through a website masquerading as a local San Francisco media outlet — which was only created days beforehand.
The other Russia-based group, Storm-1679, also made videos that made false claims about Harris, including one that was posted on Telegram that showed false info about Harris" policies on a fake New York City billboard. It got over 100,000 views in four hours before it was taken down.
The report also says a China-based group, known as Storm-1852, has created video content that is critical of both the Biden administration and the Harris campaign, which are made to look like they come from US supporters of Trump.
Microsoft says we should expect even more Russian-based cyber actors to create more false videos and websites about the US Presidential election before it takes place on November 5.