Washington [US], September 19: Iranian hackers sought to interest US President Joe Biden's campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump's campaign, sending unsolicited emails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies say.
There is no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said on Wednesday, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
The hackers sent emails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Biden's campaign before he dropped out. The emails "contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former president Trump's campaign as text in the emails," according to a US government statement.
The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran's brazen, ongoing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, The Associated Press has reported.
The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters' faith in the election and to stoke discord.
The Trump campaign disclosed on August 10 that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive internal documents. At least three news outlets - Politico, The New York Times and The Washington Post - were leaked confidential material from inside the Trump campaign. So far, each has refused to reveal any details about what it received.
Politico reported that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source - an AOL email account identified only as "Robert" - passed along what appeared to be a research dossier that the campaign had apparently done on the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Senator JD Vance. The document was dated February 23, almost five months before Trump selected Vance as his running mate.
In a statement, Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris' campaign, said it has co-operated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Biden's team were among the recipients of the emails.
"We're not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign. A few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt," Finkelstein said.
Source: Fijian Broadcasting Cooperation
