Google confirms an Iranian group is trying to access emails linked to both US presidential campaigns

NEW YORK (AP) — Google said Wednesday that an Iranian group linked to the country’s Revolutionary Guard has tried to infiltrate the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people linked to President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump since May.

The tech company's threat intelligence arm said the group is still actively targeting people associated with Biden, Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced Biden as the Democratic candidate last month when he dropped out. It said those targeted have included current and former government officials, as well as presidential campaign affiliates.

The new report from Google's Threat Analysis Group affirms and expands on a Microsoft report released Friday that revealed suspected Iranian cyber intrusion in this year's U.S. presidential election. It sheds light on how foreign adversaries are ramping up their efforts to disrupt the election that is now less than three months away.

Google's report said its threat researchers detected and disrupted a “small but steady cadence” of the Iranian attackers using email credential phishing, a type of cyberattack where the attacker poses as a trusted sender to try to get an email recipient to share their login details. John Hultquist, chief analyst for the company's threat intelligence arm, said the company sends suspected targets of these attacks a Gmail popup that warns them that a government-backed attacker might be trying to steal their password.