Trump, who would later win the election, was criticized for encouraging the hack.
Washington:
US authorities said on Wednesday that Iranian cyberattackers had offered “stolen, non-public” materials from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign to associates of his then-White House rival, Joe Biden.
According to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the hackers “sent unsolicited emails to individuals then affiliated with President Biden's campaign. These emails contained an excerpt from stolen, non-public materials from former President Trump's campaign.”
Biden was the Democratic presidential nominee at the time, but in July he dramatically resigned and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris.
The joint statement from the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said none of Biden's campaign staff responded to the emails.
In August, the same agencies first attributed the hack to Iran, accusing Tehran of trying to influence the 2024 elections. Iran denies the allegations.
“Foreign actors are increasing their influence over elections” as November's election day approaches, the U.S. statement said. Russia, Iran and China were specifically named as parties that “in one way or another are attempting to exacerbate divisions in American society for their own benefit.”
The U.S. authorities said the Iranian cyberattackers also tried to share information stolen from the Trump campaign with U.S. media organizations. They did not name the media outlets.
In August, Iran denied the allegations and challenged Washington to release evidence to the United Nations.
“Such accusations are unfounded and have no basis whatsoever,” the mission said at the time.
“As we have previously announced, the Islamic Republic of Iran has neither the intention nor the motive to interfere in the US presidential election.”
The United States goes to the polls on November 5. Both the Trump and Harris campaigns say they have been targeted by cyberattacks in recent weeks.
American technology companies have also reported detecting such attacks.
Trump's campaign said Wednesday that the plot attributed to Tehran “is evidence that the Iranians are actively interfering in the election to help Kamala Harris and Joe Biden.”
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Trump's campaign, said this was “because they knew President Trump would reinstate his tough sanctions and stand up to their reign of terror.”
In 2016, an email hack of the Democratic National Committee, blamed on the Russians, exposed internal party communications, including communications about candidate Hillary Clinton.
Trump, who would later win the election, was criticized for encouraging the hack.
Harris' campaign said on August 13 that it too had been targeted by foreign hackers, but gave no indication which country was behind the attempt.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Our staff and is published via a syndicated feed.)
