From reuters.com
WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Microsoft researchers said on Friday that Iran government-tied hackers tried breaking into the account of a “high ranking official” on the U.S. presidential campaign in June, weeks after breaching the account of a county-level U.S. official.
The breaches were part of Iranian groups’ increasing attempts to influence the U.S. presidential election in November, the researchers said in a report that did not provide any further detail on the “official” in question.
The report follows recent statements by senior U.S. Intelligence officials that they’d seen Iran ramp up use of clandestine social media accounts with the aim to use them to try to sow political discord in the United States.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York told Reuters in a statement that its cyber capabilities were “defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces” and that it had no plans to launch cyber attacks. “The U.S. presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere,” the mission added in response to the allegations in the Microsoft report.