Iranians Charged in US for Hacking Trump’s Presidential Campaign

Fri Sep 27 2024
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WASHINGTON: The Justice Department on Friday unsealed criminal charges against three Iranian operatives suspected of hacking Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and disseminating stolen information to media outlets.

According to the Justice Department the three accused hackers were employed by Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and their operation also targeted government officials, members of the media and non-governmental organizations.

The Trump campaign on August 10 disclosed that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors had stolen and distributed sensitive documents.

US intelligence officials later linked Iran to a hack of the Trump campaign and to an attempted breach of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris campaign. They added the hack-and-dump operation was meant to sow discord, within American society.

Last week, officials also said that the Iranians in late June and early July sent emails containing excerpts of the hacked information to people associated with the Biden campaign. The Harris campaign said the emails resembled spam and denounced the outreach to the Iranians as “unwelcome and unacceptable malicious activity.”

The indictment comes at a time of heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran as tension between Hezbollah and Israel escalate attacks against each other, raising concerns about the prospect of a full fledge war.

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