Donald Trump's campaign team has become the target of a hacker attack and the US Democrats are apparently also affected. The FBI is now investigating. According to media reports, Iran is suspected to be the perpetrator.
The FBI is investigating a possible hacker's access to internal communications from the campaign team of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. The US federal police confirmed this in a statement, according to consistent media reports. According to the New York Times, the FBI did not name the Republican, but referred to media reports about a “cyberattack during the election campaign.”
The Washington Post, citing people familiar with the situation, said the agency is also investigating a possible hacker attack on the Democratic opposition's campaign team. An alleged attack on campaign advisers to US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is being investigated. The FBI began the investigation in June, when Biden was still running for president. The Washington Post also reported that the FBI suspects that Iran is behind the hacker attacks.
US media receive emails with internal information
The news portal Politico was the first to report on the attacks. According to the website, Trump's spokesman Steven Cheung spoke of a hack after the online portal received several emails from a sender named “Robert” that contained internal communications from the campaign team. The Washington Post said it had been contacted in a similar way, and the New York Times is also said to have received the emails.
A 271-page internal dossier on Trump's vice presidential candidate JD Vance is said to have been leaked to the US media. Such dossiers serve, among other things, the purpose of being better prepared for political attacks from the opposing side in the US election campaign.
Is Iran behind the attacks?
According to Politico, the Trump team initially blamed “foreign actors hostile to the United States” for the cyberattack and cited a threat analysis by the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, which, among other things, deals with alleged Iranian interference in the US election campaign. The report states that a group linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard broke into the account of a former high-ranking member of a campaign team and used it to send so-called spear phishing emails.
Phishing is the theft of personal data using fake websites, text messages or emails. Such emails contain manipulated file attachments or links which, when clicked, install spyware on the computer without being detected or lead to fake websites of well-known companies. “Spear phishing emails” are also often tailored to a very specific recipient – for example, certain people or groups within a company – with a great deal of effort.
Microsoft did not identify any specific individuals or parties in the report. The Washington Post also said that it was not clear whether the actors behind the cyberattacks were also the senders of the emails to the US journalists. The Trump team also did not provide Politico with any direct evidence of a hack by Iranian actors. However, Republican Representative Michael Waltz of Florida, a loyal Trump aide, told Fox News: “We know from the intelligence community that Iran does not want Trump back. Why? Because he held them accountable!”
Trump himself tried to reinterpret the attack. On his social network Truth Social, he explained that Iran only dared to do something like that because the current US government was so weak. He, on the other hand, would make the world a better and safer place.
With information from Julia Kastein, ARD Studio Washington
