The Globe and Mail (BC Edition)
IRANIAN HACKERS FAILED TO INTEREST BIDEN’S CAMPAIGN IN STOLEN TRUMP INFO, FBI SAYS
Iranian hackers sought to interest U.S. President Joe Biden’s campaign in information stolen from rival Donald Trump’s campaign, sending unsolicited e-mails to people connected to the Democratic president in an effort to interfere in the 2024 election, the FBI and other federal agencies said Wednesday.
There’s no evidence that any of the recipients responded, officials said, preventing the hacked information from surfacing in the final months of the closely contested election.
The hackers sent e-mails in late June and early July to people who were associated with Mr. Biden’s campaign before he dropped out. The e-mails “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the e-mails,” according to a U.S. government statement.
The announcement is the latest effort to call out what officials say is Iran’s brazen, continuing work to interfere in the 2024 election, including a hack-and-leak campaign that the FBI and other federal agencies linked last month to Tehran. The Justice Department has been preparing charges in that breach, the Associated Press has reported.
The FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have said the Trump campaign hack and an attempted breach of the Biden-Harris campaign are part of an effort to undermine voters’ faith in the election and to stoke discord.
In a statement, Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for Kamala Harris’s campaign, said the campaign has co-operated with law enforcement since learning that people associated with Mr. Biden’s team were among the recipients of the e-mails.
“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” Mr. Finkelstein said.