Iranian hacker group targeted U.S. presidential candidate, Microsoft says

Hackers with ties to the Iranian government have carried out hundreds of recent cyberattacks against American journalists, government officials, and even a 2020 U.S. presidential candidate, Microsoft said Friday.

In a blog post, the company said a hacker group known as “Phosphorous” targeted at least 241 email accounts during a 30-day period between August and September. Microsoft said the attacks were not “technically sophisticated,” but the hackers did compromise at least four accounts belonging to Americans.

The company did not identify the presidential candidate targeted by the group.

“Phosphorous used information gathered from researching their targets or other means to game password reset or account recovery features and attempt to take over some targeted accounts,” Tom Burt, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of customer security and trust, wrote in a Friday blog post. “For example, they would seek access to a secondary email account linked to a user’s Microsoft account, then attempt to gain access to a user’s Microsoft account through verification sent to the secondary account. In some instances, they gathered phone numbers belonging to their targets and used them to assist in authenticating password resets.”

The attacks, Microsoft said, indicated that Phosphorous is “highly motivated” to target prominent American journalists, politicians, and government officials.

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