SAN FRANCISCO: Meta announced on Friday that it had issued warnings to US presidential campaigns about a hacking attempt linked to Iran, detected via the WhatsApp messaging service.
This update follows similar warnings from Google and Microsoft, which had also reported Iran-related hacking attempts targeting political figures ahead of the November election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Meta’s statement revealed that WhatsApp accounts associated with an Iranian “threat actor” had been sending messages impersonating technical support from major companies like AOL, Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. These malicious activities targeted individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States, and the UK, focusing particularly on political and diplomatic figures, including those connected to the Biden and Trump administrations.
The social engineering tactics used aimed to deceive people into granting access to sensitive networks or data. Meta has since blocked these accounts and linked the hacking attempts to the same group identified by Microsoft and Google.
In response to the heightened threat environment, Meta has shared details of these malicious activities with law enforcement and presidential campaigns, urging vigilance against potential adversarial targeting.
Earlier this week, US intelligence agencies accused Iran of orchestrating a recent hack targeting Trump’s campaign, corroborating claims from the campaign itself regarding the exposure of internal communications and documents. Harris’s campaign also reported being targeted by foreign hackers but did not disclose the country responsible.
Additionally, OpenAI recently revealed that it had removed a group of ChatGPT accounts used in a covert Iranian influence operation. This operation created and spread content on topics such as the Gaza conflict, Israel at the Olympics, and the US presidential election, interspersing political content with non-political topics to appear more genuine.
