US says Iran behind cyber attacks on Harris, Trump election campaigns
Al Jazeera
Intelligence agencies accuse Iran of trying to create discord amid concern about foreign interference in November polls.
The United States has accused Iran of launching cyber attacks on the presidential campaigns of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump and targeting US voters with influence operations designed to exacerbate political division.
The assessment from the FBI and other federal agencies marks the first time the US government has assigned blame amid renewed fears of the threat of foreign election interference in the country’s election.
“We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns,” the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is responsible for the defence of US government computer systems, said in a statement on Monday.
“This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former president Trump’s campaign, which the [intelligence community] attributes to Iran,” they said.
The Trump campaign accused Iran of hacking one of its websites earlier this month. At the time, Trump said Iran was “only able to get publicly available information”.
