Iranian hackers to threaten US Presidential Elections 2024? Look at this security breach network

Iranian hackers tried to target John Bolton, former national security adviser two years ago, in a similar way in which they tried to breach Donald Trump’s campaign. The hackers infiltrated into the personal email account and sent a request to a group of US-based Iran people asking them to review a book on Iran and North Korea nuclear programs.

After infiltrating the person’s email account, the hackers send a link to what look like a harmless request to a group of fellow US-based Iran hawks, asking them to review a supposed book the person was writing about Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs, stated a report by CNN.

The email asked almost half a dozen people to click a link that would take them to the mentioned document on nuclear programs. The link however contained malicious code that gave access to the recipient's information.

CNN also reported that the hackers targeted former members of both the Trump and Biden administrations. It also said that the same group targeted a former Biden administration senior diplomat in the Middle East with a nearly identical phishing scheme.

In April, the former diplomat received a seemingly innocuous email from someone who introduced themselves as a scholar at a prominent Washington, DC, think tank.

The Iranian efforts to hack current and former US officials over the years has attracted attention from US intelligence agencies in recent weeks.

In June, the same group successfully targeted the Trump campaign and stole internal documents and shared it with the media. The hackers breached the email account of Trump ally Roger Stone to target the campaign, CNN reported.

Iran has denied US allegations of cyberattacks, including US intelligence agencies. However it is difficult when Iran can possibly use the access to official email accounts. US officials had previously blamed Iran for a cyberattack on Boston Children’s Hospital in 2021 and for threatening 2020 US elections.

Iran hacking program

The report says that Iran’s hacking program is not as advanced as that of China, Russia or the US, but it has a capable force that has regularly attacked critical infrastructure in the US and the Middle East.

“Because Iran has a much smaller presence than [other US rivals and adversaries] in the US due to sanctions and due to the state of relations, they have to be more creative about how they collect the information they’re looking for,” CNN quoted a FBI official “So cyber is a key tool for them,” he added.

These hackers appear to have a broad mandate to collect data that the Iranian regime might find useful for kidnapping and assassination plots.

Masih Alinejad, a US-based Iranian journalist has been a target of assassination or kidnapping plots multiple times, reported CNN.

The number of Iranian “external operations” in various countries has increased after Soleimani’s killing, the report said citing a study by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The think tank mentioned 115 such operations since Soleimani’s death which has been more than half the total number of operations since the creation of Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

According to the report, in the current election cycle , the FBI has probed both an Iranian hack of the Trump campaign and an alleged Iranian plot to kill the candidate himself.

“Iran perceives this year’s elections to be particularly consequential in terms of the impact they could have on its national security interests, increasing Tehran’s inclination to try to shape the outcome,” the report said quoting US security agencies.