The FBI says it is investigating Iranian cyber hacking attempts against the 2024 presidential campaign of former U.S. President Trump.
‘FBI is investigating the recent cyber intrusion into the Trump campaign,’ the FBI told Fox News in a statement. ‘We can now confirm that the FBI is investigating.’
The 2024 presidential campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris told Fox News it ‘vigilantly monitors and protects against cyber threats, and we are not aware of any security breaches of our systems.’
The claim of Iranian involvement came shortly after Microsoft issued a report detailing foreign agents’ attempts to interfere in the U.S. campaign in 2024.
That report cited an instance of an Iranian military intelligence unit in June sending ‘a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor.’
Politico reported Saturday that it began receiving emails on July 22 from an anonymous account. The source — an AOL email account identified only as ‘Robert.’
‘These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process’ Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations, when asked about the claim of the Trump campaign, denied being involved.
However, Iran has long been suspected of running hacking campaigns targeting its enemies in the Middle East and beyond. Tehran also long has threatened to retaliate against Trump over the 2020 drone strike he ordered that killed prominent Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
In its report, Microsoft stated that ‘foreign malign influence concerning the 2024 US election started off slowly but has steadily picked up pace over the last six months due initially to Russian operations, but more recently from Iranian activity.’
The analysis continued: ‘Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three U.S. election cycles. Iran’s operations have been notable and distinguishable from Russian campaigns for appearing later in the election season and employing cyberattacks more geared toward election conduct than swaying voters.’
‘Recent activity suggests the Iranian regime — along with the Kremlin — may be equally engaged in election 2024,’ Microsoft concluded.
Fox News’ Jake Gibson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.