who they were banking on – The Time

American digital giant Meta announced on Monday that it has blocked a number of WhatsApp accounts it believes are linked to an Iranian hacking group and that it believes were targeting political leaders close to US President Joe Biden or his predecessor Donald Trump. According to Meta, the addresses were used to approach people in several countries outside the US, particularly in “Israel, Palestine, Iran and the United Kingdom.” “Their efforts appeared to focus on political or diplomatic officials and public figures, some of whom were associated with the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump,” the group said in a statement.

The investigation would have led to the APT42 group, “an Iranian cyber threat known for its campaigns that use simple phishing techniques to steal people’s access.” Meta had already linked the group, in a previous investigation, to attempts to target human rights defenders in Iran and Israel, politicians in the United States and researchers and journalists specializing in Iran around the world. Among the techniques used, the hackers pretended to be technical support for the access provider AOL, Yahoo!, Google or Microsoft. Meta specifies that it was alerted by reports sent by some of the people targeted, also believing that none of the intrusion attempts were fruitful. This is not the first time that Iran has been accused of attempting to hack political leaders during the electoral campaign and in the run-up to the presidential elections of November 5.

OpenAI warned on August 16 that ChatGPT had been used to produce content, particularly related to the elections, by an Iranian group, identified as Storm-20235, which was seeking to carry out an influence operation, specifying that the content had reached a limited audience. OpenAI linked this operation to one revealed on August 9 by Microsoft, also of Iranian origin, which combined the creation of false information sites, cyber attacks and hacking, as well as fake social media accounts, which sometimes went as far as attempting to intimidate or incite violence against political figures. Donald Trump’s electoral team, for its part, claimed on August 10 that it had been hacked, accusing “foreign sources”, and pointing the finger at the Middle Eastern country. Politico had previously claimed to have received emails containing information about the Republican candidate’s campaign from a source who refused to identify himself, while American authorities confirmed that the source was indeed linked to Iran.