US says Iran responsible for Trump campaign hack

WASHINGTON: Iran was behind a recent hack targeting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, US security agencies said Monday, accusing Tehran of seeking to influence the 2024 election.

The statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed the Trump campaign claim from earlier this month that it had been targeted, potentially by Iran.

“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 security agencies said.

“This includes the recently reported activities to compromise former president Trump’s campaign, which the (intelligence community) attributes to Iran,” they said.

In response, Iran’s mission to the United Nations denied the country’s role in the hack and challenged Washington to release evidence for the claim.

“Such allegations are unsubstantiated and devoid of any standing,” the mission said in a statement.

“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran harbors neither the intention nor the motive to interfere with the US presidential election.

“Should the US government genuinely believe in the validity of its claims, it should furnish us with the pertinent evidence — if any — to which we will respond accordingly.”

The United States goes to the polls on November 5, with both Trump’s and Democratic rival Kamala Harris’s campaigns saying they had been targeted by cyber attacks in recent weeks.

US-based tech companies have also said they detected such attacks.

The US intelligence community said Monday it was “confident” that Iran had used social engineering and other methods to target individuals in both campaigns, and that the attempts were “intended to influence the US election process.”

Trump’s campaign said on August 10 that it had been hacked, blaming “foreign sources” for distributing internal communications and a dossier on running mate J.D. Vance.