Microsoft: Iran makes late play to meddle in U.S. elections
Iran is stepping up its efforts to interfere in the 2024 U.S. elections, laying the groundwork to stoke chaos with fake news campaigns and seeking to get into the accounts of candidates, Microsoft said in a report Friday.
One Iranian hacking group sent a spear-phishing email two months ago to a high-ranking presidential campaign official, relying on a compromised email account of a former senior adviser, according to the tech giant. It also tried to log into the account of a former presidential candidate. Microsoft didn’t name any of the targets.
In total, four different groups have conducted a range of activities, Microsoft said.
Microsoft has observed one of the fake news campaigns targeting audiences on both sides of the political spectrum. That revelation comes less than two weeks after U.S. intelligence officials briefed reporters that Iran appears intent on undermining the campaign of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
One compromise of a county-level government employee looked like part of a broader, less targeted campaign.
The increase in activity appears to fit a pattern of Iran making a later play at influencing elections than other meddlers, such as Russia, according to the report from the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center.
“Over the past several months, we have seen the emergence of significant influence activity by Iranian actors,” the report states. “Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles. Iran’s operations have been notable and distinguishable from Russian campaigns for appearing later in the election season and employing cyberattacks more geared toward election conduct than swaying voters.”
The Iranian activity falls into two categories, Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft center, said in a blog post. “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,” he wrote, adding that “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 fake news site Microsoft identified catered to liberal audiences and called Trump an “opioid-pilled elephant in the MAGA china shop” and a “raving mad litigiosaur.” Another claimed to be a source of conservative news, with a focus on gender reassignment and other LGBTQ issues. Both were the work of one Iranian group, Mcirosoft said.
Watts wrote that another group “may be setting itself up for activities that are even more extreme, including intimidation or inciting violence against political figures or groups, with the ultimate goals of inciting chaos, undermining authorities, and sowing doubt about election integrity. “
The U.S. government has filed charges against Iranians over past alleged election interference. Perhaps the most prominent of those campaigns involved pretending to be the far-right hate group the Proud Boys and sending emails to Democratic voters.
Other Microsoft reports on election meddling this year have focused on China’s use of artificial intelligence and Russian attempts to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine.
