The FBI said Monday afternoon that it was investigating what it described as a successful attempt by the Trump campaign to hack into his campaign and steal personal documents.
The FBI statement comes two days later Politics, The Washington Postand The New York Times announced over the weekend that they had received the original documents stolen from the Trump campaign. This was stated by the spokesperson of Trump’s election campaign On Saturday, it was broken in June. NBC News has not received any of the alleged files.
The FBI has not released any other information or characterized the hack as occurring. Trump’s campaign claimed that the files were part of a hacking operation carried out by Microsoft in Iran announced He cited the report as evidence on Friday. Microsoft declined to comment, citing its policy of not sharing customer data without permission. The company shares such details if a customer formally requests it from Microsoft, a spokesperson told NBC News.
The Trump campaign did not respond to an email seeking clarification on whether it had authorized Microsoft or any federal agency to speak publicly about the hack. Iran’s representative at the UN denied The country is behind the hack.
Cybersecurity and election security experts have consistently warned that foreign efforts to influence US elections could include such “hack and leak” attacks, in which private systems are compromised to steal and then leak sensitive information. Hack-and-leak attacks have affected many elections around the world, most notably the 2016 US election. Hackers working for Russian military intelligence stole emails and other files from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary for America organizations and methodically leaked them in the final months of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
There are security professionals with the US government and private organizations Russia, China and Iran warned In an apparent effort to influence the 2024 US election, Iran is trying to undermine former President Donald Trump, the Republican Party nominee.
A recent report from Microsoft found that hackers compromised the email account of a former top adviser to a presidential campaign, then used that account to send a phishing email to another senior adviser on that campaign, and recently alerted the campaign. . Microsoft did not say whether the phishing email was successful or which campaign was targeted.
As of Monday afternoon, little was known about the alleged hack, including how willing the Trump campaign was to work with the FBI.
Chris Krebs, chief intelligence and public policy officer at cybersecurity firm SentinelOne, said Trump and his aides may be reluctant to cooperate fully with federal investigators given the former president’s “association with federal law enforcement.”
“There may not be as much willingness to cooperate,” said Krebs, who was director of CISA during the Trump administration and was fired by the former president after declaring the 2020 election the safest in history.
Krebs said the decision not to fully cooperate with federal authorities could hinder and delay the investigation into the alleged hacking attack.
“Unfortunately, this may hinder our understanding of the incident and what happened from a national security perspective,” he said.
The Trump campaign’s claim adds to the already deeply antagonistic relationship between Iran and the former president. When Trump was president In 2020, he authorized a drone strike Iran’s main military leader Qasem Soleimani was killed. Last month, Biden administration officials said they had reason to believe Iran was planning to assassinate Trump. Iran’s UN representative denied this claim.
Tehran has vowed to avenge the general’s death, and several former senior officials in the Trump administration are protected around the clock by government-sponsored security teams.
Former US officials and cybersecurity experts have said the best response to hacking and disinformation efforts is transparency, providing accurate information quickly and exposing efforts to mislead the public.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, urged federal authorities to release any relevant information without delay.
“The Intelligence Community must act with great courage to declassify and disclose any relevant information it has regarding the potential foreign nature of this intrusion. Transparency is still our best deterrent against influence peddling,” Schiff wrote on social media.
Schiff said that US intelligence agencies were too slow to respond to Russia’s 2016 election meddling operation. The Democratic lawmaker added that any foreign interference in US elections should be condemned, regardless of which party is targeted.
The apparent hacking of Trump’s campaign files echoes the 2016 Russian campaign against Hillary Clinton, but so far appears less elaborate in the distribution of hacked files.
The Russian operation involved a sophisticated scheme involving a fake hacktivist persona named Guccifer_2. a real Romanian hacker. The fake Guccifer had an active WordPress account and a Twitter handle that they used to share documents.
Russia’s effort as well gave files to WikiLeakswho published them. He has separately posted the Democratic files on a website he created called DCLeaks, which also has an associated Facebook page.
There is no apparent similar distribution system for the hacked Trump files, at least so far. If the hackers are working for Iran, it shows they are not short-sighted, said Simin Kargar, a senior non-resident fellow who studies Middle East influence operations at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
“They’re kind of incompetent. If they really wanted to do a good hack and leak operation, they could have done better,” he said. “It is very suitable for Iranian actors.”