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A Single Iranian Hacker Group Targeted Both Presidential Campaigns, Google Says

APT42, which is believed to work for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, targeted about a dozen people associated with both Trump and Biden’s campaigns this spring, according to Google’s Threat Analysis Group.

When Donald Trump's presidential campaign publicly stated last week that it had been successfully targeted by Iranian hackers, the news may have initially seemed like a sign that Middle Eastern country was particularly focused on the candidate whom it perceived to take the most hawkish approach to its regime. In May and June, APT42, which is believed to be working in service of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps or IRGC, targeted about a dozen people associated with both Trump and Joe Biden, including current and former government officials and individuals associated with the two political campaigns. In its report, Google lays out APT42’s typical phishing operations, which have ranged from directing victims to a fake Google Meet page that tries to trick them into entering their username and password to luring them into a conversation on a messaging platform such as Telegram, WhatsApp, or Signal, where the hackers then send the victim a phishing toolkit designed to intercept their credentials, as well as two-factor authentication codes or account recovery codes.

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