Three Iranian nationals were accused by US authorities of hacking into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign this year.
Masoud Jalili, Seyyed Ali Aghamiri, and Yasar (Yaser) Balaghi were charged by U.S. authorities with carrying out a hack-and-leak operation against members of Congress, the Trump campaign, and former White House and high-ranking government officials. The indictment was released on Friday.
US officials revealed last week that Iranian hackers attempted to provide materials purloined from the Trump campaign to people connected to Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
The three are accused of eighteen counts, which include hacking-related offences, wire fraud, identity theft, and material assistance to a designated foreign terrorist organisation.
The 37-page indictment details a hacking campaign that began in 2020 and was directed at US government and intelligence personnel, the media, and people involved in political campaigns.
The Trump campaign claimed in August that Iran had hacked into its internal conversations. In a statement at the time, Irani officials denied any involvement in the breach.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation verified a few days later that Iran was responsible for infiltrating Trump’s campaign.
At a press conference, Attorney General Merrick Garland responded, “We’ve seen no indication that anyone replied,” when asked if the Biden campaign ever used the leaked materials.
He went on to say that both the Trump and the Biden campaigns—which Vice President Kamala Harris assumed in July—provided the FBI with “good cooperation.”
The Harris campaign declared that it was working with law enforcement.
“We’re not aware of any material being sent directly to the campaign; a few individuals were targeted on their personal emails with what looked like a spam or phishing attempt,” said Morgan Finkelstein, the Harris campaign’s national security spokeswoman.
We earlier reported that the official YouTube channel of the Supreme Court of India has been hacked, with videos now promoting XRP, a cryptocurrency linked to Ripple Labs.
The channel, which is normally used to live stream important court hearings and store past legal proceedings, had its content removed or set to private by the attackers.
