Former President Donald Trump's campaign said its computers had been hacked and suggested Iranian figures were involved in the theft and distribution of confidential internal documents.
The campaign did not provide any concrete evidence of Iran's involvement, but Saturday's announcement came a day after Microsoft released a report detailing efforts by foreign agents to interfere in the 2024 U.S. election.
The article cites an example from June, when an Iranian military intelligence unit sent “a phishing email to a senior presidential campaign official from the hacked email address of a former senior adviser.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung blamed the hack on “foreign sources hostile to the United States.”
The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Politico first reported the hack on Saturday.
The publication reported that on July 22 it began receiving emails from an anonymous address.
The source, an AOL email account identified as “Robert,” leaked what appeared to be a research dossier the campaign apparently conducted on Republican vice presidential candidate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance.
The document was dated February 23, nearly five months before Trump chose Vance as his running mate.
“These documents were obtained illegally” and “intended to interfere with the 2024 elections and sow chaos in our democratic process,” Mr. Cheung said.
He pointed to a Microsoft report released Friday that found that “Iranian hackers compromised the account of a ‘senior official’ in the US presidential campaign in June 2024, which coincides with the imminent deadline for President Trump to choose his running mate.”
“The Iranians know that President Trump will end their terror, just as he did in his first four years in the White House,” Mr. Cheung said, adding that “any media outlet or news agency that reprints documents or internal communications is doing exactly what America’s enemies want.”
In response to the Microsoft report, Iran's mission to the UN denied any plans to interfere with or carry out cyberattacks on the US presidential election.
Mr. Chung did not immediately respond to questions about the campaign's engagement with Microsoft on the matter.
Microsoft said Saturday it would not comment beyond the blog post and Friday's report.
In the report, Microsoft said that “foreign malicious influence targeting the 2024 U.S. elections began slowly but has steadily gained momentum over the past six months, initially through Russian operations and more recently through Iranian activity.”
The analysis continues: “Iranian cyber influence operations have been a persistent feature of at least the last three U.S. election cycles.
“Iran’s operations were visible and different from the Russian campaigns in that they came later in the election season and used cyberattacks aimed more at running the election than influencing voters.”
“Recent activity suggests that the Iranian regime — along with the Kremlin — may be equally involved in the 2024 elections,” Microsoft concluded.
Specifically, the report details how in June 2024, Iran's military intelligence unit Mint Sandstorm sent a phishing email to the U.S. presidential campaign through a hacked account of a former adviser.
“The phishing email contained a fake forwarder with a hyperlink that directs traffic through an attacker-controlled domain and then redirects to the specified domain,” the report said.
Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the hacking report or the Democratic nominee's cybersecurity protocols.