By Katie Paul
Aug 23 – Meta META.O said on Friday it had identified possible hacking attempts on the WhatsApp accounts of U.S. officials from the administrations of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, blaming the same Iranian hacker group revealed earlier this month to have compromised the Trump campaign.
In a blog post, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp described the attempt as a “small cluster of likely social engineering activity on WhatsApp” involving accounts posing as technical support for AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.
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It blocked the accounts after users reported the activity as suspicious and had not seen any evidence suggesting the targeted WhatsApp accounts had been compromised, it said.
Meta attributed the activity to APT42, a hacking group widely believed to be associated with an intelligence division inside Iran’s military that is known for placing surveillance software on the mobile phones of its victims. The software enables the team to record calls, steal text messages and silently turn on cameras and microphones, according to researchers who follow the group.
A spokesman for Iran’s permanent mission to the United Nations in New York declined to comment on the Meta allegation specifically, but previously said “the Iranian government neither possesses nor harbors any intent or motive to interfere in the United States presidential election.”
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Meta linked the group’s activity to efforts to breach U.S. presidential campaigns reported by Microsoft and Google earlier this month, ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.
The company’s blog post did not name the individuals targeted, saying only that the hackers “appeared to have focused on political and diplomatic officials, business and other public figures, including some associated with administrations of President Biden and former President Trump.”
Those figures were based in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Iran, the United States and the United Kingdom, it added.
(Reporting by Katie Paul; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
