Iran is targeting the 2024 US elections

 

                        Iran is targeting the 2024 US elections

Today, we're sharing intelligence about the activities we're tracking that increasingly indicate Iran intends to influence this year's U.S. presidential election. In recent weeks, groups linked to the Iranian government have stepped up two types of activities. First, they laid the groundwork for hot-issue election influence campaigns and began running these campaigns in an apparent effort to stir up controversy or influence voters, especially in key states. After launching operations that Microsoft says are designed to gain intelligence on political campaigns and help influence future elections.

We discuss this activity in a new report we published today that details this activity, and four examples illuminate what we can increasingly expect from Iran as November approaches. An Iranian group has launched clandestine news sites targeting groups of American voters from opposite ends of the political spectrum. One such site, called Nio Thinker, targets a leftist audience and insults former President Donald Trump, calling him an "opioid elephant in China's MAGA store" and a "crazy judge." Another, called Savannah Time, claims to be a "trusted source for conservative news in vibrant Savannah" and focuses on topics such as LGBTQ+ issues and gender change. The evidence we found suggests that the sites are using AI-based services to plagiarize at least some of their content from American publications.

Another Iranian group has been laying the groundwork for U.S.-focused influence operations since March. We believe that this group can be prepared for even more extreme activities, including intimidation or incitement to violence against political figures or groups, with the ultimate goal of inciting chaos, undermining authority and calling into question the integrity of the election. In June, another Iranian group, this time linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), sent a phishing email to a senior presidential campaign official from the compromised email account of a former top adviser. The email contained a link that redirected traffic to a domain controlled by the group before redirecting to the website with the link provided. A few days after this activity, the same group tried unsuccessfully to access the account of a former presidential candidate. Since then we have informed the intended people.

A fourth Iranian group compromised the account of a county-level government employee in a key state. The compromise was part of a larger password distribution operation, and Microsoft Threat Intelligence did not notice that the actor gained additional access beyond the single account, making it difficult to discern the group's ultimate goals. Since the beginning of 2023, the group's operations have focused on the collection of strategic intelligence, especially in the satellite, defense and health sectors, aimed at US government organizations, often in key states .

The Microsoft Threat Intelligence report we're releasing today comes from the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, or MTAC, which tracks the influence operations of specific groups of nation states around the world. MTAC regularly tracks election threats as part of Microsoft's broader Democracy Forward work and builds on the work of the team tracking recent election threats in India, the UK and France. Today's update also includes the activities we have observed from actors advancing the geopolitical goals of Russia and China, each to varying degrees of effectiveness. We share such information so that voters, government institutions, candidates, parties and others can be informed about influence campaigns and protect themselves from threats. We also trained candidates and parties involved in the elections this year, building on our legacy offerings, such as AccountGuard. Finally, Microsoft does not support any political candidate or party. Our goal in publishing these reports is to highlight the importance of fighting electoral fraud and to promote education and learning about potential foreign interference.

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