Iran was secretly behind efforts to paint the July assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump as a hoax, according to the cyber intelligence firm Recorded Future.
The gloves came off in Tehran last weekend with Iran’s apparent hack-and-leak attack aimed at the Trump campaign, according to Sean Minor, who researches influence operations for Recorded Future.
Mr. Minor said on a webinar that Iran’s International Union of Virtual Media is behind an online campaign to make voters think the attempt on Mr. Trump’s life was fiction. The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned IUVM in October 2020 over previous efforts to influence elections.
“IUVM was projecting the narrative that the attempted assassination on former President Trump was staged by the Trump campaign to basically increase support,” Mr. Minor said on Tuesday.
Violent domestic extremist groups then quickly adopted the false narrative and pushed it themselves, according to Mr. Minor. He said the feedback loop between Iran and the domestic extremists will continue as the November vote nears.
Iran has denied charges it is trying to influence the U.S. presidential campaign. Tehran’s U.N. mission said Sunday that the U.S. vote was a “domestic issue” and dismissed allegations of interference by Iran as “lacking credibility.”
Analysts said Iran looks to be pursuing several different cyber avenues to damage Mr. Trump’s electoral chances. The Trump campaign said Saturday it was attacked and indicated Iranian hackers were involved in stealing and spreading internal documents.
Before the Trump campaign spoke up, Microsoft said last week it found an Iranian group sending a “spear-phishing” email to a high-ranking official on a presidential campaign. The FBI subsequently confirmed it was investigating the apparent hack of the Trump campaign.
Multiple media outlets have said that they were sent leaked internal materials from the former president’s campaign effort and have refrained from publishing the content of what they received.
If scoop-hungry reporters do not bite, Iran may turn elsewhere to push its digital agenda.
Microsoft said last week it observed an Iranian group launching covert news sites to target voters, including one that hurled insults at Mr. Trump. Recorded Future said in a new report Tuesday that it observed Iran using “newly developed covert social media accounts” to influence U.S. politics and the election.
Use of the covert social accounts appears limited thus far, according to the firm, which shared new details of the suspicious activity it saw spreading from overseas.
Recorded Future said it expects a massive uptick in foreign manipulation efforts online in the final moments before Election Day in the U.S.
“It remains likely that threat actors will seek to conduct a surge in destabilizing influence activities in the days or hours leading up to November 5, 2024, in an attempt to disrupt the voting process before defenders have time to act,” Recorded Future’s report said.
The firm, however, assessed that Iran- and Russia-affiliated actors’ efforts were “unlikely to affect the election itself at this time.” Recorded Future also said China is not likely to try large-scale cyber influence operations aimed at the U.S. election.
While state-sponsored manipulation efforts may not be persuasive, the firm said future efforts may prove inflammatory enough to provoke a response from the voting public.
“False and manipulated information propagated by state and non-state influence actors has the potential to increase domestic polarization within the U.S. ahead of the elections and ultimately poses the risk of influencing voter behavior, subsequently affecting which candidates are elected,” the firm said. “Influence activities related to an election do not need to be successful in order to have a damaging impact on the public’s trust in democratic institutions and the integrity of the electoral process.”
• Ryan Lovelace can be reached at rlovelace@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.