Iran is striking out left and right in an attempt to interfere with the U.S. presidential election in November with the help of slick-looking websites, hackers, and phishing attacks.
IMFAT -- The objective of the sophisticated campaign, U.S. intelligence and cyberthreat experts say, is to fuel distrust in the U.S. democratic system and to exploit and heighten social divisions.
As the November 5 election nears, Iranian hackers have been accused of targeting the e-mail accounts of both the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, and his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris.
U.S. intelligence assessments and researchers say both political campaigns have been targeted by phishing attacks carried out by a group with suspected ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), the elite branch of the armed forces.
And experts say an Iranian network dubbed “Storm-2035” operates multiple inauthentic news sites on the web and social media that use AI-generated content to agitate conservative and liberal dissidence.
“Iran’s main goal in this space is to sow discord and chaos and to undermine the integrity of the United States’ electoral system,” said Simin Kargar, a senior nonresident fellow at the Washington-based Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab).