Meta deletes WhatsApp accounts linked to Iranian hackers

Meta has banned WhatsApp accounts linked to a hacking group affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The accounts were presented as technical support and targeted people associated with the administrations of US President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

This group of hackers is the same one behind recent email phishing attacks targeting people associated with Trump, Biden, and Vice President Kamala Harris.

And the calculations are reversed Meta announced it on Friday (23)This is the latest sign of Iranian attempts to influence the 2024 US presidential election scheduled for November. Trump is the Republican candidate, while Kamala is the Democratic candidate.

Iranian hackers tried to scam victims on WhatsApp, but failed

According to Meta, the WhatsApp hackers pretended to be providing technical support for AOL, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. Social engineeringThey tried to trick victims into revealing sensitive information such as account passwords. The company identified the scams after some targets reported suspicious messages.

Meta said it had not seen any evidence that the targeted WhatsApp accounts had been hacked, but added that it had shared the information with authorities and other tech companies.

According to the tech giants’ statement, the hackers also targeted “political officials, diplomats, business people and other public figures” in Israel, Palestine, Iran and the United Kingdom.

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Iran’s attacks on the US elections

The US government said on Monday (19) that Iran is trying to infiltrate the presidential campaigns of the Republican and Democratic parties as part of efforts to shape the outcome of the vote scheduled for November.

“We have seen increasingly aggressive Iranian activity during this election cycle, including specifically influence operations targeting the American public and cyber operations targeting presidential campaigns.” Written in a joint statement Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Federal Cybersecurity Agency (CISA).

The Trump campaign has blamed Iran for the leak of internal documents to the media, which the FBI is investigating. Harris’s campaign says the FBI alerted it in July that it was the target of a foreign influence operation, but it had no knowledge of a security breach.