Earlier this week, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) released a new report, claiming it has found evidence that Iran-based state actors have been trying on several fronts to influence the US presidential election of 2024. This weekend, the campaign to elect Donald Trump as US President claims that it has been hacked and referenced the Microsoft report.
Politico first reported that it had received emails from an anonymous source that featured documents from inside Trump's campaign. Later, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed it had been hacked from "foreign sources hostile to the United States."
In the MTAC report that was published on Friday, Microsoft stated that back in June, an Iran-based hacker group with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps released a phishing email to an unnamed but "high-ranking official" that was part of an unidentified US presidential campaign. Microsoft said the email came from an account from a "former senior advisor" that had been compromised.
Microsoft added:
The email contained a link that would direct traffic through a domain controlled by the group before routing to the website of the provided link. Within days of this activity, the same group unsuccessfully attempted to log into an account belonging to a former presidential candidate. We’ve since notified those targeted.
Microsoft has made no further public comments about its report since it was released. In his statement to Politico, Cheung said:
On Friday, a new report from Microsoft found that Iranian hackers broke into the account of a ‘high ranking official’ on the U.S. presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee.
Cheung would not say if the Trump campaign has contacted law enforcement or Microsoft about the breach. Politico says it started receiving internal communications from an anonymous source that appeared to be from the Trump campaign in late July. It claims it has independently confirmed the documents to be authentic. It has not independently verified who the anonymous source actually is or what its motivation is to hack into the Trump campaign.
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