The Joe Biden and Donald Trump campaign was targeted by foreign players, said Google.
Chinese hackers have targeted staff working on Democrat Joe Biden’s US presidential campaign, a senior Google security official said on Thursday. The same official said that Iranian hackers had recently targeted email accounts belonging to Republican President Donald Trump’s campaign staff.
The announcement, made on Twitter by the head of Google’s threat analysis group, Shane Huntley, is the latest indication of digital espionage systematically targeting the best politicians.
Huntley said there was “no sign of compromise” from either campaign.
Iranian attempts to get into the emails of Trump campaign officials have already been documented. Last year, Microsoft Corp announced that a group often dubbed Charming Kitten had attempted to break into email accounts belonging to an unnamed U.S. presidential campaign, only from sources identified as Trump’s.
Earlier this year, threat intelligence firm Area 1 Security said that Russian hackers had targeted companies linked to a Ukrainian gas company where Biden’s son had previously served on the board.
Google declined to provide details beyond Huntley’s tweets, but the unusually public attribution is a sign of Americans’ sensitivity to digital espionage efforts targeting political campaigns.
“We have sent our standard government-supported attack warning to targeted users and have forwarded this information to federal authorities,” said a Google representative.
Hacking to interfere with elections has become a concern for governments, especially since U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had conducted a hacking and propaganda operation to disrupt the U.S. democratic process in 2016 to help Trump, then candidate, to become president. Among the targets was the digital infrastructure used by the 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign
Moscow has denied any interference.
Attempts by foreign opponents to penetrate presidential campaigns are common, but the unusually public attribution offered by Google is a sign of Americans’ sensitivity to digital espionage efforts aimed at candidates.
“We are aware of information from Google that a foreign actor tried unsuccessfully to access the personal e-mail accounts of campaign staff,” said a Biden campaign spokesperson. “We have known from the start of our campaign that we would be subjected to such attacks and we are ready to deal with them.”
The Trump campaign, the Chinese Embassy in Washington, and the Iranian mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Charming Kitten, the group identified by Google as responsible for targeting the Trump campaign, also recently made the headlines about other exploits, including targeting the pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences Inc .
Earlier this year, Reuters linked the group to attempts to impersonate high-profile media figures and journalists.
John Hultquist, Senior Director of Intelligence Analysis with the American cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc , described the two hacking groups as “spies” and said that they were probably trying to collect information rather than stealing material to be disclosed online.
The FBI and the office of the director of national intelligence both declined to comment.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
