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Federal law enforcement agencies are investigating an apparent hacking incident involving Donald Trump’s campaign, which the former president is blaming on Iran, after a trove of documents were dumped to reporters over the weekend.
Hackers appear to have compromised an email account belonging to one of Trump’s long-time allies: Roger Stone.
The Republican operative’s email account was the victim of a phishing attempt, and his account was allegedly used to try to break into another that belonged to a senior campaign official.
Stone — who was convicted for lying to Congress in 2019 about efforts to dig up dirt about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign — was informed by the FBI as well as Microsoft that his email account was compromised by a “Foreign State Actor,” who sent messages containing a link that could give hackers access to that person’s computer.
But it remains unclear whether a recent leak of Trump campaign documents to reporters had anything to do with the allegedly Iran-backed attempt to compromise his campaign through Stone’s email account, and what, if anything, those apparent hacking attempts have yielded.
A spokesperson for the FBI confirmed to The Independent that the agency is investigating the matter but declined to provide any specific details about the investigation
“Mr. Stone was contacted about this matter by Microsoft and the FBI and continues to cooperate with both,” Grant Smith, an attorney for the Republican operative, told The Independent. “Mr. Stone will have no further comment at this time.”
Last week, Microsoft reported that an Iranian group, believed to be connected to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, sent a phishing email in June to “a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor,” who is now believed to be Stone.
“The email contained a link that would direct traffic through a domain controlled by the group before routing to the website of the provided link,” according to Microsoft’s report. “Within days of this activity, the same group unsuccessfully attempted to log into an account belonging to a former presidential candidate. We’ve since notified those targeted.”
One day later, Trump claimed that Microsoft had told his campaign that “one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government — Never a nice thing to do!”
He said that would-be hackers obtained only “publicly available information,” and appeared to blame President Joe Biden’s administration for the alleged attack.
“Iran and others will stop at nothing, because our government is Weak and Ineffective,” he wrote on Truth Social.
A separate Iranian group was allegedly behind the breach of an account belonging to a “county-level government employee in a swing state,” according to Microsoft.
“The compromise was part of a broader password spray operation and Microsoft Threat Intelligence did not observe the actor gain additional access beyond the single account, making it hard to discern the group’s ultimate objectives,” according to the report.
Microsoft also reported that another Iranian group was targeting American voters through hyperpartisan, AI-generated websites designed to look like news outlets that plagiarized “at least some of their content” from US publications.
The company identified yet another Iranian group that the company believes has been “setting the groundwork for US-focused influence operations since March.”
“We believe this group may be setting itself up for activities that are even more extreme, including intimidation or inciting violence against political figures or groups, with the ultimate goals of inciting chaos, undermining authorities, and sowing doubt about election integrity,” according to the report.
On Saturday, Trump’s campaign announced that it was hacked after reporters at several outlets had received copies of what appeared to be an internal campaign vetting document for Trump’s running mate JD Vance.
Politico reported that the outlet began receiving emails from an anonymous AOL account from a person named “Robert” on July 22.
The emails included what appeared to be internal communications from a senior campaign official as well as a research dossier prepared about Vance, including a 271-page overview of his public statements and his “potential vulnerabilities,” including his past criticism of Trump.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung claimed that the 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.”
The latest revelations forecast an already-turbulent election cycle with less than three months until Election Day, with echoes of Russian and Iranian attempts to interfere with US elections in 2016 and 2020, respectively.
In July, US intelligence officials warned that Iran — as it did in 2020 — would seek to “coerce political leaders, undermine political systems, and shape the political landscape in ways that favor its national security objectives.”
The latest hacking news also follows the federal indictment of a Pakistani national who was accused of working with the Iranian government to carry out a murder-for-hire plot targeting US government officials.
Federal prosecutors alleged that Asif Raza Merchant had traveled to the US to hire hit men, who were undercover officers, in order to carry out assassinations in August or September this year, according to an indictment unsealed in New York.
