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Meta The company said Friday it had blocked a “small cluster” of WhatsApp accounts linked to an Iranian hacker group that had targeted associates of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The company Blog Post The fake WhatsApp accounts appear to originate from an Iranian threat actor known as APT42. Google Previous Explained The group has been classified as an “Iranian state-sponsored cyber espionage group” and has targeted a range of activists, non-governmental organisations, media and others.
Mehta said the plan was intended to exploit “political and diplomatic officials and other public figures, including those associated with the administrations of President Biden and former President Trump.” The campaign also targeted people in Israel, Palestine, Iran and the UK.
With less than 75 days until the November election, and with Meta receiving increased public attention due to Facebook’s use of the platform to manipulate the past two US presidential elections, the company said it has not seen evidence that WhatsApp users’ accounts were compromised and is sharing further information with “law enforcement and industry stakeholders.”
Mehta said his security team discovered APT42’s involvement after analyzing suspicious messages that multiple users reported receiving from fraudulent WhatsApp accounts.
“These accounts posed as technical support for AOL, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft,” Meta said in a blog post. “Some people targeted by APT42 reported these suspicious messages to WhatsApp using our in-app reporting tool.”
Earlier this month, the Trump campaign said foreign actors had infiltrated its network and illegally obtained internal communications. said At the time, the company said it had identified multiple Iranian hacking groups attempting to influence the US presidential election, and that a group linked to APT42 “sent spear-phishing emails to senior presidential campaign officials from a compromised email account of a former senior adviser to the presidential campaign in June.”
2019, Microsoft said The group has identified several hackers with ties to the Iranian government and is believed to have targeted an unspecified U.S. presidential campaign, as well as other government officials and media.
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