Supporters of Joe Biden and Donald Trump in Kansas City, Missouri.
Kyle Rivas / Getty Images
hacker Backed by the Chinese and Iranian governments, Google was implicated in a cyberattack against the Trump and Biden campaigns, Google said Thursday.
Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) has discovered a phishing attack, a cyberattack in which hackers try to get victims to click a link and reveal confidential credentials.
“Recently, TAG saw the Chinese APT group phishing Biden campaign workers and Iranian APT Trump campaign workers with no phishing signs of compromise,” said TAG head Shane Huntley. said in a tweet. APT stands for “Advanced Persistent Threat”, a term used by cybersecurity specialists for various hacking groups.
Huntley added that Google sent a warning to the target campaign staff and informed federal law enforcement officials of the attempted cyber attacks. The company confirmed this in a statement.
“We can confirm that in our threat analysis group, recent phishing attempts were carried out by a Chinese group targeting the personal email accounts of Biden campaign employees and an Iranian group targeting personal emails. Targeted the Trump campaign employees’ mail accounts, “Google said. “We saw no evidence that these attempts were successful. We sent our government-supported standard attack alert to target users and passed this information on to federal law enforcement agencies. We encourage campaigners to provide additional protection for their work and personal email And we offer security resources like our advanced protection program and free security keys for qualifying campaigns. ”
The company said the attacks on multiple campaign employees targeted both Trump and Biden, and that the attacks followed their personal accounts. The Biden campaign said she was wary of such attacks.
“We are aware of reports from Google that a foreign actor unsuccessfully tried to access the campaign employees’ personal email accounts,” the campaign said in a statement. “We knew from the start of our campaign that we would be exposed to such attacks and we are prepared for them. Biden for President takes cybersecurity seriously, we will remain vigilant against these threats and ensure that the assets of the campaign are secure. “”
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comments, nor did the agency for cybersecurity and infrastructure security.
This is not the first time that Iranian hackers have been accused of targeting the Trump campaign. Microsoft announced this last October discovered more than 2,700 attempts to hack a presidential campaign, including Trumps. Chinese hackers have also been accused of major cyber attacks against the United States. including the Equifax violation and tries to steal Coronavirus vaccine research.
The 2016 US presidential election showed how much a cyber attack can have on the democratic process Russian hackers infiltrated the servers of the National Democratic Committee as well as the employee’s email accounts Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Since then, government agencies like the CISA increased efforts to ensure election securityas well as technology giants like Google and Microsoft.
The Chinese, Iranian and Russian governments have routinely denied participation in such cyber attacks.
Google introduced its extended protection program in 2017 and advised campaign employees to block theirs personal accounts along with their work accounts. Microsoft has a similar service through its Defense of Democracy Program.