American politics has always been like a Netflix drama (No, not ‘House of Cards’), and this one is another plot twist. Google is now reporting, that Chinese and Iranian attackers attempted to hack presidential campaigns of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, in yet another hacking debacle in the race for American presidency.
The alarm was pulled by Shane Huntley, who works for the Google Threat Analysis group. In a tweet, he warned about a possible attack, saying that TAG “saw China APT group targeting Biden campaign staff & Iran APT targeting Trump campaign staff with phishing.” He also added that no signs of compromise were recovered, so the attempt must have been unsuccessful. Still, this is a major cause from alarm.” He also added a “reminder about government-backed phishing” in which he explained the dangers of phishing.
“One of the main threats to all email users (whatever service you use) is phishing, attempts to trick you into providing a password that an attacker can use to sign into your account,” the article read. He then warned about phishing that is backed by governments, saying, “…a small minority of users in all corners of the world are still targeted by sophisticated government-backed attackers. These attempts come from dozens of countries.”
In a follow up tweet, Huntley said that the groups have been identified as APT31 and APT35. These groups are known for targeting government officials . APT35 was credit for an attempted breach in Trump’s campaign by Microsoft, last year.
A Google spokesperson told tech media publication TechCrunch, “We can confirm that our Threat Analysis Group recently saw phishing attempts from a Chinese group targeting the personal email accounts of Biden campaign staff and an Iranian group targeting the personal email accounts of Trump campaign staff. We didn’t see evidence that these attempts were successful. We sent the targeted users our standard government-backed attack warning and we referred this information to federal law enforcement. ”
This isn’t the only hacking news this week. In an unprecedented turn of events, the notorious hacker group “Anonymous Legion” has returned after years of silence. In the short time that the group has returned, it has already launched a war against the Minneapolis police department, provided ‘proof’ in the form of separate files on US President Donald Trump and Jeffery Epstein’s child trafficking ring and blamed the Royal Family for Princess Diana’s murder.
