State-based hackers targetted Trump, Biden campaigns, says Google

Google said state-based hackers have targetted the campaigns of both United States President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, adding it saw no evidence that the attempts were successful.

The director of its Threat Analysis Group, Shane Huntley, disclosed the attempts on Thursday on Twitter.

It's been reported that a Chinese group known as Hurricane Panda targetted Trump campaign staffers while an Iranian outfit known as Charming Kitten had attempted to breach accounts of Biden campaign workers.

Such attempts involve forged emails with links designed to harvest passwords or infect devices with malware.

The effort targeted personal email accounts of staffers in both campaigns, according to the company statement.

A Google spokesman added that "the timeline is recent and that a couple of people were targetted on both campaigns. We sent targetted users our standard government-backed attack warning and referred the incidents to federal law enforcement."

Neither the Biden nor the Trump campaign would not say how many staffers were targetted, when the attempts took place or whether the phishing was successful.

Iranian attempts to break into Trump campaign officials’ emails have been documented before. Last year, Microsoft Corpannounced that a group often nicknamed Charming Kitten had tried to break into email accounts belonging to an unnamed USpresidential campaign, which sources identified as Trump’s.

Earlier this year, the threat intelligence company Area 1 Security said Russian hackers had targeted companies tied to a Ukrainian gas firm where Biden’s son once served on the board.

Google declined to offer details beyond Huntley’s tweets, but the unusually public attribution is a sign of how sensitive Americans have become to digital espionage efforts aimed at political campaigns.

In addition, Charming Kitten, also known as Newscaster and APT35, is reported to have targetted US and Middle Eastern government officials and businesses, also for information theft and spying.

In October, 2019, Microsoft said hackers linked to Iran's government had targetted a US presidential campaign and the New York Times and Reuters identified the target as Trump's re-election campaign.

(with inputs from agencies)