(5MinNewsBreak.com) – In a revelation showing America’s foreign enemies are eager to disrupt the 2024 election, US intelligence officials have pinpointed the Islamic Republic of Iran as the top threat to the vital vote.
Weeks after providing a July briefing to journalists regarding foreign threats to the US election, intelligence officials held another session in which they revised their earlier evaluation, Newsmax reports.
They had previously identified Russia as the paramount threat to the November election.
However, they now downgraded this assessment, elevating Iran—which was initially deemed a lesser threat—as a significant concern for its active endeavors to disrupt the electoral process.
According to The Wall Street Journal, intelligence officers disclosed that Iran’s objective is to undermine former President Donald Trump’s bid for re-election, as crudely attempted in the 2020 electoral cycle.
The Trump campaign revealed on Saturday that it suffered a cybersecurity breach by “foreign sources hostile to the United States,” attributing the intrusion to Iran.
An unidentified individual using the moniker “Robert” disseminated the stolen internal Trump documents to various media entities, the Journal reported.
This development followed a disclosure by Microsoft a day prior, which outlined numerous initiatives by Iran targeting the 2024 election.
Since June, a faction associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps began cyberattacks against an unnamed presidential campaign.
Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, in a blog post, explained that Iranian-affiliated cyber groups had recently expanded their interference tactics.
“First, they’ve laid the groundwork for influence campaigns on trending election-related topics and begun to activate these campaigns in an apparent effort to stir up controversy or sway voters — especially in swing states,” Watts stated.
“Second, they’ve launched operations that Microsoft assesses are designed to gain intelligence on political campaigns and help enable them to influence the elections in the future,” he added.
The election season, already tumultuous due to an assassination attempt against Trump and President Joe Biden’s decision to not seek re-election, has been further complicated by Iran’s aggressive actions, despite its ongoing conflicts in the Middle East.
Rich Goldberg, a former Trump National Security Council official, expressed to the Journal, “The regime is already trying to assassinate Trump and former senior members of his administration, so I don’t think anyone should be surprised it would hack the campaign to try to influence the election.”
Steven Adair, president of the cybersecurity firm Volexity, described Iranian hackers as highly proficient in spear-phishing campaigns.
“They’re pretty sophisticated and they’re very persistent,” Adair remarked.
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