FBI called in

USA accuses Iran after cyber attack on Trump

US authorities accuse Iran of a hacker attack on the Trump campaign.

(Bild: mirsad - stock.adobe.com)

The USA is blaming Iran for a hacker attack on the campaign of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. "More aggressive activities by Iran" were detected during this election cycle.

This was announced by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US National Directorate of Intelligence (ODNI) and the US Cybersecurity Agency (Cisa) in a joint statement on Monday. This included the recently disclosed activities to compromise the Trump campaign, which the US intelligence community attributed to Iran.

The Iranian mission to the United Nations rejected the country's role in the hacking attack. It also called on the US to provide evidence for the allegations. "Such accusations are unfounded and have no basis whatsoever," the mission stated. Iran has neither the intention nor the motive to interfere in the US presidential election.

Vance dossier leaked
Last week, the FBI announced that it was investigating possible hacker access to the internal communications of Trump's election campaign team. A 271-page internal dossier on Trump's vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance is said to have been leaked to US media. One of the purposes of such dossiers in the US election campaign is to be better prepared for political attacks from the other side. Trump's spokesperson spoke of a hack in this context. The election campaign team of US Vice President Kamala Harris also announced that it had been the target of a foreign cyber attack.

The joint statement from the ODNI, Cisa and the FBI went on to say that the Iranians had attempted to gain access to individuals with direct links to the Democratic and Republican campaign teams. "These activities, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the U.S. election process." Iran is trying to "foment discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions". The Vance dossier was not explicitly mentioned in the statement.

Iran views the presidential election on November 5 as particularly consequential in terms of its national security interests, the US intelligence services warned. This increases Tehran's tendency to "influence the outcome".

Not unexpected for intelligence agencies
The intelligence services also pointed out that the approach was not new. Iran and Russia had used this tactic not only in the US during this and previous election cycles, but also in other countries around the world. "We do not condone foreign efforts to influence or disrupt our elections, including targeted attacks on American political campaigns," it said.

Last week, IT security experts from Google also reported that a hacker group affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards had attempted to gain access to the email accounts of US Democratic and Republican candidate Trump's campaign staff. The Iranian Revolutionary Guards are the elite military force of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The hacker group, known as APT42, is said to have accessed the personal emails of around a dozen high-ranking employees from the Democratic and Republican campaign camps in May and June. At the time, US President Joe Biden was still the Democrats' likely presidential candidate; after his withdrawal, Vice President Harris is now running against Trump.