Microsoft has launched new intelligence warning of an uptick in Iranian influence campaigns ahead of the US presidential election in November.
Microsoft has identified four Iranian groups that use different techniques, tactics and procedures (TTPs) to influence voter opinion, target specific campaigns or sow distrust in the political system.
In one example given by Microsoft, an Iranian group targeted “a senior official in a presidential campaign” with a phishing attack and then “unsuccessfully attempted to log into an account belonging to a former presidential candidate.”
Trump's campaign was hacked
Following the release of Microsoft’s intelligence, former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign claimed that some of its communications had been compromised by “foreign sources hostile to the United States.”
Citing the Microsoft report, a Trump campaign spokesman, Steven Cheung, spoke to Political about the attack, stating that “these documents were illegally obtained from foreign sources hostile to the United States, with the intention of interfering in the 2024 elections and sowing chaos throughout our democratic process.”
“On Friday, a new report from Microsoft found that Iranian hackers breached the account of a ‘senior official’ in the US presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the time when President Trump selected a vice presidential candidate,” Cheung concluded.
Political He also received a series of anonymous messages from someone who identified himself only as “Robert” who sent a series of internal communications from within the Trump campaign, which Politico verified as authentic with two people familiar with the documents on condition of anonymity.
Among the documents was an investigative document identified as a research dossier for Trump's recently chosen vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance. It included a section titled “POTENTIAL VULNERABILITIES” that contained a number of past criticisms of Trump. “Robert” also claimed that they have a “variety of documents from [Trump’s] “legal and judicial documents for internal campaign discussions.”
Microsoft’s intelligence report also identified an Iranian group attempting to influence American voters on opposite ends of the political spectrum, with a site targeting left-leaning audiences that regularly insults former President Trump, and a right-leaning site that frequently posts about LGBTQ+ and gender issues, with much of the content stolen from other American publications.
Another group identified by Microsoft is likely seeking to disrupt and delegitimize U.S. elections by calling for violence against political figures and groups with the ultimate goal of causing chaos, fear, and undermining law enforcement.
A fourth group has carried out a password-stealing campaign that allowed access to an account belonging to a government official in one country, but failed to access any other accounts. Microsoft's observations point to an intelligence-gathering campaign focused on the satellite, defense and healthcare sectors.
