An Iranian government hacking group attacked about a dozen people in May and June.
Iran targeted about a dozen people linked to US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump in a long-running phishing attack. Axios writes about this with reference to a report by Google.
The publication notes that the report officially states for the first time that Iran targeted, in particular, the Biden-Harris administration and related presidential campaigns.
Google said APT42, an Iranian government hacking group also known as Charming Kitten and Mint Sandstorm, attacked about a dozen people in May and June.
Hackers primarily attacked personal e-mail boxes of officials of various postal providers. At least one of those attacks — a prominent political consultant — was successful, Google found.
Google security researchers are still documenting attempts by APT42 to hack personal email accounts associated with Biden, Harris and Trump.
A known tactic of APT42 involves embedding malicious links in both the body of emails and in safe-looking PDF attachments, making them difficult for users to detect.
Additionally, the hacker group is known to interact with victims on encrypted messaging platforms such as Signal and WhatsApp to instill trust.
It was previously reported that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating the alleged attempted hacking attacks by Iran on an associate of Donald Trump and representatives of the Biden-Harris campaign.
