Microsoft announced on August 9 that Iranian spies hacked into the computer systems of someone they call a “former senior adviser” to a presidential campaign—it turns out that campaign was Donald Trump’s.
Trump confirmed he was the target of the electronic intrusion the next night, saying that one of his websites was hacked by the Iranian government, which he said was “never a nice thing to do.”
Microsoft’s original report said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had broken into the campaign staffer’s account. Once in, the group sent “fake email messages,” a kind known as “spear phishing.” This is a type of hacking that targets people by presenting the hackers as sending legitimate messages from a person or organization they trust, and the messages include information of interest to the people being scammed. A presidential campaign is the perfect venue for this kind of digital thievery as likely voters are hungry for candidate information.
Trump said the hackers had only gotten their hands on information that was already publicly available. And he blames what he calls a “weak and ineffective” administration under President Joe Biden for the ability of Iranian spies to hack into American computer systems.
So far, there are not many details to confirm or deny any hypothesis about how the Iranian hackers were able to do it. The spy group is known as “Mint Sandstorm.”
While Trump is also blaming what he calls hostile foreign sources for a recent leak of internal Trump campaign documents to the outlet Politico. The publication said it has received numerous documents from someone identifying themselves only as “Robert.” These included communications between Trump and his vice-presidential running mate Republican Senator JD Vance of Ohio. Also included was a dossier of opposition research on Vance.
Politico wasn’t the only news site to get the inside goods; the New York Times has received some of the same documents, apparently from the same source. The Trump campaign has confirmed to these news outlets that they were leaked as a result of the hack, but it is not clear whether the spear-phishing attack is related to the document leak.
Iran is no fan of Donald Trump and certainly does not want to see him win the U.S. presidency. While in office, Trump backed out of a 2015 Obama-era nuclear deal with the country, and reimposed harsh economic sanctions that had been lifted. Worse in the eyes of the totalitarian Iran government, Trump ordered the assassination of Major General Quassim Suleimani of the Revolutionary Guard.
