Fresh Air

Amidst alleged ongoing attempts to assassinate former and current American officials and politicians, including former US President and current Republican nominee Donald Trump, it is easy to overlook the Iranian regime’s continued attempts at election interference in the US.

On August 8, the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center (MTAC) released a report on various Iranian regime-affiliated groups and their cyber activities in the US:

In recent weeks, groups connected with the Iranian government have upped two kinds of activity. First, they’ve laid the groundwork for influence campaigns on trending election-related topics and begun to activate these campaigns in an apparent effort to stir up controversy or sway voters – especially in swing states. Second, they’ve launched operations that Microsoft assesses are designed to gain intelligence on political campaigns and help enable them to influence the elections in the future.

One of these groups set up “covert news sites” targeting both ends of the political spectrum, while a separate group “may be setting itself up for activities that are even more extreme, including intimidation or inciting violence against political figures or groups.”

This could be connected to the July 9 warning by US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that:

Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza…We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.

A third group linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “sent a spear phishing email in June to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign from the compromised email account of a former senior advisor…Within days of this activity, the same group unsuccessfully attempted to log into an account belonging to a former presidential candidate.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed on August 19 that this was the Trump campaign. The hackers then attempted to leak purloined documents to the media. More recently, CNN reported that one of Trump’s attorneys was also targeted as part of the hacking campaign. These same hackers have been targeting the Biden-Harris campaign, as well.

On August 16, OpenAI announced it had “identified and took down a cluster of ChatGPT accounts that were generating content for a covert Iranian influence operation identified as Storm-2035.” In February, OpenAI disrupted an Iran-linked group dubbed “Crimson Sandstorm”, which “used our services for scripting support related to app and web development, generating content likely for spear-phishing campaigns, and researching common ways malware could evade detection.”

In both cases, OpenAI noted the operations did “not appear to have achieved meaningful audience engagement. The majority of social media posts that we identified received few or no likes, shares, or comments. We similarly did not find indications of the web articles being shared across social media.”

Google also reported this month on disrupting the spear phishing activities of the IRGC’s APT42, seemingly the so-called Charming Kitten group, about which AIJAC has written previously, which it called “a sophisticated, persistent threat actor”, primarily targeting US and Israeli officials, politicians and other figures of interest.

While none of this online activity is remotely new, including attempted election interference in the US, it is notable that the regime is undeterred and continues to believe it can conduct such activity with complete impunity.

If they can try to kill the former and potentially next American president and receive no tangible response, they are likely correct in believing that their cyber-activities will not provoke any meaningful reaction. But you’d think the media in the US – which focussed heavily on Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 Presidential elections – would at least report more widely on this campaign by a rogue actor whose actions are currently risking a real-world regional war.