Iranian government hackers accused of breaching the Trump campaign with deceptive emails also used WhatsApp accounts to try to trick former Biden and Trump administration officials, parent company Meta said Friday.
Meta said it discovered the effort after users reported suspicious messages in which the hackers posed as customer support representatives from Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and AOL.
Meta investigated and suspended fewer than a dozen accounts that had targeted fewer than two dozen people in the United States, Israel, Iran and elsewhere. The company said the efforts were in their early stages and that it had not seen evidence that any had succeeded.
The disclosure adds another element to what is known about Iran’s attempts to interfere in this year’s election. As previously highlighted by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Microsoft and Google, among others, the hacking group that is part of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has also stood up deceptive news sites that pander to the left and to the right.
It also successfully took over an email account of former Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone and used it to send emails to try to fool Trump’s current campaign staffers, people familiar with the matter told The Washington Post.