The Donald Trump presidential campaign has blamed Iran for an alleged hack that has resulted in internal communications including the “potential vulnerabilities of VP pick JD Vance” being leaked to media outlets.
Politico reported over the weekend that it had received emails from an anonymous AOL account since late July relaying “what appeared to be internal communications from a senior Trump campaign official.”
The documents included vetting details on JD Vance, the outlet continued, and the documents had been authenticated by “two people familiar with them.” The anonymous emailer claimed to have other documents, Politico reported.
Trump took to his Truth Social platform to declare: “We were just informed by Microsoft Corporation that one of our many websites was hacked by the Iranian Government - Never a nice thing to do!”
He claimed the hackers only harvested “publicly available information.”
“But, nevertheless, they shouldn’t be doing anything of this nature. Iran and others will stop at nothing, because our Government is Weak and Ineffective, but it won’t be for long. What Iran doesn’t realize is that I will make the World a better and safer place, and that’s good for them, also!”
In 2016, Trump’s campaign indirectly benefitted from a breach of the Democratic National Committee, which was blamed on Russian hackers. This saw embarrassing emails between senior campaign officials splurged to Wikileaks. Foreign election interference is a major concern both sides of the Atlantic.
The hack came to light just hours after Microsoft disclosed “foreign malign influence” activities focused on the campaign from Iran as well as Russia and China.
The report said: "In June 2024, Mint Sandstorm—a group run by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intelligence unit—sent a spear-phishing email to a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign from a compromised email account of a former senior advisor." It also detailed other phishing attempts.
Microsoft’s report detailed six Iranian groups targeting the election, four of which were linked to the countries to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp.
These spanned cyberattacks as well as misinformation and influence efforts.
The report said, “Looking forward, we expect Iranian actors will employ cyberattacks against institutions and candidates while simultaneously intensifying their efforts to amplify existing divisive issues within the US, like racial tensions, economic disparities, and gender-related issues..
Meanwhile, Trump spewed out a series of posts claiming that rival Kamala Harris had “AI’d” a fake crowd at a campaign rally in Michigan.
According to CNN, the claims originated with “far-right conspiracy theorists” who claimed to have spotted clues that proved the crowd was generated by AI.
Trump’s claims were, in turn, rubbished by tech experts and people who had been at the rally.
UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid subjected the images to a series of models to detect AI manipulation – and found none.
In a post on Linked, Farid wrote “While the lack of evidence of manipulation is not evidence the image is real. We find no evidence that this image is AI-generated or digitally altered.”
