Ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, the Justice Department has unveiled charges against three Iranian hackers accused of disrupting Donald Trump’s campaign.
What Happened: The U.S. Justice Department unsealed charges against three Iranian hackers for disrupting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, Reuters reported on Friday.
The accused are members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. They allegedly targeted the Nov. 5 election between former President Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Iran dismissed the accusations as baseless. The Justice Department has also targeted Russian election interference, charging and sanctioning state media employees for funding pro-Trump influencers.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that the hackers — Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, and Yasar Balaghi — aimed to undermine Trump’s campaign. “We are seeing increasingly aggressive Iranian cyber activity during this election cycle,” Garland said.
The indictment alleges the hackers used fake email accounts to deceive campaign officials, stealing emails and internal documents, which were then leaked to the media and Joe Biden‘s campaign. Charges include wire fraud, identity theft, and computer fraud.
The U.S. Treasury Department also imposed sanctions on the three men and other Revolutionary Guard members. The hackers are currently in Iran, out of U.S. law enforcement’s reach. Garland emphasized the Justice Department’s commitment to pursuing these individuals indefinitely.
Why It Matters: The charges against the Iranian hackers come amid heightened concerns over foreign interference in U.S. elections.
In August, Trump’s campaign confirmed a security breach, believed to be orchestrated by foreign entities hostile to the U.S. This breach included the theft of internal documents, which were later leaked to the media.
Furthermore, Meta Platforms Inc. also thwarted an attempt by Iranian hackers to target both Trump and Biden’s campaigns via WhatsApp accounts linked to the hacking group APT42. This group has been identified by tech giants like Google as an “Iranian state-sponsored cyber espionage actor.”
In addition, U.S. intelligence agencies revealed that Iran tried to share hacked Trump campaign data with Biden’s team. According to a joint statement by the FBI, ODNI, and CISA, Iranian cyber actors sent unsolicited emails containing stolen Trump campaign material to individuals associated with Biden’s campaign.
Moreover, OpenAI uncovered and dismantled a covert Iranian influence operation using ChatGPT to manipulate public opinion during the 2024 elections. The operation, named Storm-2035, produced content on U.S. politics and the presidential election, shared via social media and websites posing as news outlets.
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