Skip to main content

Foreign hackers targeted Trump and Biden campaign Gmail accounts, Google says

Hackers from Iran and China have targeted the presidential campaigns of both President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, according to Google.

Hackers reportedly targeted campaign staffers’ Gmail accounts, according to a tweet from Shane Huntley, director for Google’s Threat Analysis Group, on Thursday. Huntley said there was no sign of any accounts being compromised and that Google sent users a warning about the targeted hack. 

Recently TAG saw China APT group targeting Biden campaign staff & Iran APT targeting Trump campaign staff with phishing. No sign of compromise. We sent users our govt attack warning and we referred to fed law enforcement. https://t.co/ozlRL4SwhG

— Shane Huntley (@ShaneHuntley) June 4, 2020

Huntley also tweeted that the hackers were identified as China’s APT31 and Iran’s APT35.

Google told Digital Trends that the attempted hacks were recent and that there were a couple of targets. A Google spokesperson said that the company encourages campaign staff to use extra protection in their emails, such as two-factor authentication or Advanced Protection.

“We sent the targeted users our standard government-backed attack warning and we referred this information to federal law enforcement,” a Google spokesperson said. “We encourage campaign staff to use extra protection for their work and personal emails, and we offer security resources such as our Advanced Protection Program and free security keys for qualifying campaigns.”

Biden’s campaign said in an official statement that it has been preparing for an attack like this to happen.

“We are aware of reports from Google that a foreign actor has made unsuccessful attempts to access the personal email accounts of campaign staff,” a campaign spokesperson said. “We have known from the beginning of our campaign that we would be subject to such attacks and we are prepared for them. Biden for President takes cybersecurity seriously, we will remain vigilant against these threats, and will ensure that the campaign’s assets are secured.”

Digital Trends also reached out to the Trump campaign to comment. We will update this story when we hear back. 

Although these cyberattacks come at a sensitive time as the U.S. heads into the 2020 presidential elections, it’s not the first time that Iran’s APT35 group, also known as Phosphorous, has been linked to attacks on computer systems of businesses and governments.

Last year, Microsoft was targeted by a similar hack attempt by Iran. The series of cyberattacks targeted U.S. presidential candidates and their campaigns, journalists, and current and former government officials. Of the 241 attempted attacks, Microsoft reported at the time that a total of four accounts were compromised.

Editors' Recommendations

Allison Matyus
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Allison Matyus is a general news reporter at Digital Trends. She covers any and all tech news, including issues around social…
Donald Trump says the U.S. government should sue Facebook and Google
How to Watch Trump State of the Union

President Donald Trump took a swing at Big Tech on Wednesday, saying that the U.S. government "should be suing Google and Facebook and all that."

Trump spoke out against the companies an interview on Fox Business. He did not give specific reasons for bringing lawsuits against tech giants, but claimed without evidence that Google is trying to rig the 2020 election. He also accused Twitter of making it harder for users on the platform to find and follow his account. 

Read more
We finally know the price of Asus’ most powerful gaming NUC
The Asus ROG NUC on a desk surrounded by three monitors.

The first Asus ROG NUC (Next Unit of Computing) model is just around the corner. The small form factor PC is now up for pre-order at a German retailer, and although it's powerful enough to rival some of the best laptops, it costs more than many comparable models -- and you'll still have to pay extra for a monitor.

Asus' first take on Intel's portable PC contains a lot of compute power in a small chassis. Although there are a few configurations of the PC, the one that was spotted up for sale ahead of time comes with Intel's latest Meteor Lake-H CPU, the Core Ultra 9 185H, which sports 16 cores and 22 threads and can be boosted to run at up to 5.1GHz, all with a thermal design power (TDP) of 45 watts. However, Asus allows overclocking, meaning that the CPU can run at up to 65 watts instead.

Read more
YouTube tells creators to start labeling ‘realistic’ AI content
YouTube on Roku.

YouTube is taking steps to try to help viewers better understand if what they’re watching has been created, whether completely or in part, by generative AI.

“Generative AI is transforming the ways creators express themselves -- from storyboarding ideas to experimenting with tools that enhance the creative process,” YouTube said in a message shared on Monday. “But viewers increasingly want more transparency about whether the content they’re seeing is altered or synthetic.”

Read more