Microsoft has claimed Iran is gearing up for a major effort to interfere in this year’s US presidential election.
The tech giant released a new report on Friday detailing four distinct operations.
“This recent cyber-enabled influence activity arises from a combination of actors which are conducting initial cyber-reconnaissance and seeding online personas and websites into the information space,” it warned.
“Looking forward, we expect Iranian actors will employ cyber-attacks against institutions and candidates while simultaneously intensifying their efforts to amplify existing divisive issues within the US, like racial tensions, economic disparities, and gender-related issues.”
The four influence operations Microsoft highlighted so far are:
- The “Sefid Flood” actor has been preparing the ground for influence operations since March. It specializes in impersonating activist groups and may even try to intimidate, dox or incite violence against political figures
- In May, the “Peach Sandstorm” group compromised a user account “with minimal access permissions at a county-level government in a swing state,” as part of a broader password spray operation
- The Storm-2035 network is engaging US internet users at both ends of the political spectrum via four websites masquerading as news outlets. These include EvenPolitics, Savannah Time and Nio Thinker
- The “Mint Sandstorm” group run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) unsuccessfully tried to log in to an account belonging to a former presidential candidate. It also sent a spear-phishing email to “a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor,” Microsoft said
It’s unclear if the latter is related to a new disclosure by the Trump camp over the weekend that it was hacked. A politics news site in the US has been receiving multiple emails from an anonymous account since July 22, relaying what appear to be internal communications from the team.
This apparently included a 271-page dossier on VP pick JD Vance, highlighting “potential vulnerabilities” with the Trump running mate.
“These 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,” campaign spokesperson, Steven Cheung, told Politico, before citing the Microsoft report.
During the run-up to the 2020 election, Iran launched multiple campaigns “that impersonated American extremists, and attempted to sow discord among US voters and incite violence against US government officials,” according to Microsoft.
However, it was the 2016 election where foreign interference is thought to have had the greatest impact on the final result, when Russian spies hacked the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and released damaging internal emails to the public via Wikileaks.