Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's team has adopted encrypted mobile devices and secure laptops to protect staff, following multiple successful Iranian attacks and two assassination attempts on the former president.
The campaign recently purchased a batch of these devices from Santa Barbara, California-based Green Hills Software, a company that develops a proprietary security-focused operating system already used by several U.S. agencies, according to the company's CEO, Dan O'Dowd. who spoke with Reuters.
Although Green Hills Software announced the agreement with the campaign in a press release on October 1, the news has received minimal media coverage.
O'Dowd, the company's CEO and president, said his company provided the technology after approaching the campaign through mutual connections. “Ensuring the integrity of the democratic process is paramount,” O'Dowd said in the statement.
A Trump campaign spokesman declined to comment. However, a source familiar with the campaign's operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the leadership had made significant security improvements to its hardware but was unsure of the vendor involved.
Asked about IT security on the Harris campaign, spokesperson Morgan Finkelstein said, “Generally speaking, we have robust cybersecurity measures in place and staff are trained to be on the lookout for potentially malicious content.”
The decision to upgrade the Trump campaign's devices comes after months of targeted Iranian cyberespionage that compromised internal communications and documents. The move was also motivated by physical threats against Trump, with concerns that hackers or spies could monitor staff and use that information to attack people, another person familiar with the matter said.
In an interview, O'Dowd explained that a core group of campaign staff are already using the devices, which are more resistant to remote cyberattacks.
The Iranian hacking group responsible for the breach earlier this summer, known as APT42 in the security research community, is known for deploying advanced malware on mobile phones capable of recording conversations and activating cameras remotely. APT42 is also known to spy on people who are then physically threatened by agents linked to Iranian intelligence, according to previous reports. Reuters reports based on a series of attacks against Iranian dissidents.
Publicly available government procurement documents show that Green Hills Software is a federal contractor that supplies its operating system to multiple military branches, where it integrates with various platforms, including weapons systems. The company's portable product is also used in FBI field offices.
