US says Iran behind cyber attacks on Harris, Trump election campaigns

Intelligence agencies accuse Iran of trying to create discord amid concern about foreign interference in November election.

The United States has accused Iran of launching cyber attacks on the presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and targeting US voters with influence operations designed to exacerbate political division.

The assessment from the FBI and other federal agencies marks the first time the US government has assigned blame amid renewed fears of the threat of foreign election interference in the country’s election.

“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is responsible for the defence of US government computer systems, said in a statement on Monday.

“This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former president Trump’s campaign, which the [intelligence community] attributes to Iran,” they said.

The Trump campaign accused Iran of hacking one of its websites earlier this month. At the time, Trump said Iran was “only able to get publicly available information”.

Iran, the US statement said, had also targeted the campaign of Harris, who will formally accept the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination at this week’s convention.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations issued a statement calling the allegations “unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing” and challenged Washington to release evidence for the claim.

“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbours neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election,” the mission said.

The US statement said the intelligence community was confident Iranian operatives using social engineering and other means “sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both parties”, the statement said.

Those activities included thefts and disclosures “intended to influence the US election process”, the statement added, without elaborating.

The United States goes to the polls on November 5.

Google said this month that hackers backed by Iran were targeting the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns.

A hacker group known as APT42 linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps went after high-profile individuals and organisations in Israel and the United States, including government officials and political campaigns, Google said in a threat report.

In 2016, a hack of Democratic National Committee emails, blamed on Russian military intelligence, exposed internal party communications, including about candidate Hillary Clinton.

Trump, who went on to win the election, was criticised for encouraging the hack.

The latest hacking allegations come at a time of significant tensions between Washington and Tehran amid Israel’s continuing war in Gaza.

The US agencies did not detail how they concluded that Iran was responsible, nor did they describe the nature of any information that may have been stolen from the Trump campaign.