Yuan on Friday said it blocked “a small group” of WhatsApp accounts linked to an Iranian hacking group that targeted officials linked to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.
The company said in a statement blog post Fake WhatsApp account appears to originate from Iranian threat actor known as APT42 and is also liked by other tech companies Google Before descriptive As an “Iranian state-sponsored cyber espionage operator.” The group targets various activists, NGOs, media outlets and others.
Mehta said the scheme aimed to exploit “political and diplomatic officials and other public figures, including some associated with the administrations of President Biden and former President Trump.” The campaign also targets the people of Israel, Palestine, Iran and the UK
With less than 75 days until the November election, Meta has attracted increasing public attention because of the way Facebook was exploited and manipulated in the previous two presidential campaigns. The company said it has not found any evidence that any WhatsApp user's account has been compromised and is sharing more information with “law enforcement and our industry peers.”
Meta said its security team discovered the involvement of APT42 after analyzing suspicious messages from fraudulent WhatsApp accounts, but the exact number was unknown.
“These accounts impersonated AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft technical support,” Mehta said in the blog post. “Some of APT42's targeted users reported these suspicious messages to WhatsApp using our in-app reporting tool.”
The Trump campaign said earlier this month that a foreign actor compromised its network and illegally gained access to internal communications. Microsoft also explain At the time it uncovered several Iranian hacking groups trying to influence the U.S. presidential election, and a group affiliated with APT42 “sent a fish email from a compromised email account to a senior official in the presidential campaign in June.” Spish Phishing Emails” in the name of a former senior consultant. “
2019, Microsoft explain It has identified several hackers with ties to the Iranian government who are believed to have targeted an unspecified U.S. presidential campaign, in addition to other government officials and media outlets.
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