According to a recent announcement by US security agencies, Iran has been formally linked to a sophisticated hack of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
The agencies believe this could be part of a broader effort by Iran to shape the outcome of the 2024 US elections, raising important questions about foreign interference.
The Trump campaign’s claim of being targeted by a cyberattack has been substantiated by a joint statement from the ODNI, FBI, and CISA, which points to Iran as the potential source.
“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,” the security agencies said
“This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former president Trump’s campaign, which the (intelligence community) attributes to Iran,” they said.
Iran’s UN mission has categorically denied any involvement in the cyberattack on the Trump campaign, calling on the US to provide tangible evidence to back up its claims.
“Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” the mission said in a statement.
“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election.
“Should the US government genuinely believe in the validity of its claims, it should furnish us with the pertinent evidence — if any — to which we will respond accordingly.”
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The United States goes to the polls on November 5, with both Trump’s and Democratic rival Kamala Harris’s campaigns saying they had been targeted by cyber attacks in recent weeks.
In a worrying trend, US-based tech companies have also reported detecting cyberattacks, echoing the experiences of the Trump and Harris campaigns.
The US intelligence community said Monday it was “confident” that Iran had used social engineering and other methods to target individuals in both campaigns, and that the attempts were “intended to influence the US election process.”
Trump’s campaign said on August 10 that it had been hacked, blaming “foreign sources” for distributing internal communications and a dossier on running mate J.D. Vance.
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement.
The Republican former president’s campaign implied Iran was behind the move as news outlet Politico reported it had received emails with the campaign material from a source who refused to identify themselves.
