Meta says Iranian group tried to target Trump, Biden officials' WhatsApp accounts

On Friday, Meta announced that it had detected potential hacking efforts on the WhatsApp accounts of American officials who served under both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump. This was attributed to the same Iranian hacker group recently responsible for infiltrating the Trump campaign.

Meta 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.

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.

It 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.


X
Sitelerimizde reklam ve pazarlama faaliyetlerinin yürütülmesi amaçları ile çerezler kullanılmaktadır.

Bu çerezler, kullanıcıların tarayıcı ve cihazlarını tanımlayarak çalışır.

İnternet sitemizin düzgün çalışması, kişiselleştirilmiş reklam deneyimi, internet sitemizi optimize edebilmemiz, ziyaret tercihlerinizi hatırlayabilmemiz için veri politikasındaki amaçlarla sınırlı ve mevzuata uygun şekilde çerez konumlandırmaktayız.

Bu çerezlere izin vermeniz halinde sizlere özel kişiselleştirilmiş reklamlar sunabilir, sayfalarımızda sizlere daha iyi reklam deneyimi yaşatabiliriz. Bunu yaparken amacımızın size daha iyi reklam bir deneyimi sunmak olduğunu ve sizlere en iyi içerikleri sunabilmek adına elimizden gelen çabayı gösterdiğimizi ve bu noktada, reklamların maliyetlerimizi karşılamak noktasında tek gelir kalemimiz olduğunu sizlere hatırlatmak isteriz.