The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) have attributed the cyberattack that targeted former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign to Iran.
The agencies released a joint statement claiming Iran’s objective is to undermine confidence in the upcoming U.S. presidential election by influencing public opinion, and compromising presidential campaigns:
We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, specifically involving influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns.
In the statement, the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) claimed the Republican and Democratic presidential campaigns were targeted by Iran in recent attempts and attacks:
The IC is confident that the Iranians have through social engineering and other efforts sought access to individuals with direct access to the presidential campaigns of both political parties. Such activity, including thefts and disclosures, are intended to influence the U.S. election process.
The statement also asserted Russia and Iran have a history of engaging in activity with the objective of compromising elections in the United States and other countries:
It is important to note that this approach is not new. Iran and Russia have employed these tactics not only in the United States during this and prior federal election cycles but also in other countries around the world.
Last week Trump responded to a question about the FBI investigation of the attack, stating:
It looks like it’s Iran, Iran doing it because Iran is no friend of mine, and you know a lot of bad signals get sent. But, it looks like it’s Iran doing it and the reason is because I was strong on Iran and I was protecting people in the middle east that maybe they don’t, they aren’t so happy about that. So that’s what it seems to be, Iran.
