A federal grand jury in Washington has indicted three members of a cyberespionage unit associated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps for mounting wide-ranging attacks targeting politicians8k8, officials and journalists that led to the hacking of the Trump campaign this summer.
The Iranians unleashed a barrage of malicious emails to a wide array of targets over the past four years, hoping to gain access to email accounts and databases. In 2024, the group, linked to Iranian military intelligence, sharpened its focus to undermine former President Donald J. Trump, whom they regard as their most implacable enemy, according to an indictment unsealed on Friday.
The attacks were “part of Iran’s continuing efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process and unlawfully acquire information related to former and current U.S. officials,” prosecutors wrote.
The hackers — identified in the indictment as Masoud Jalili, Seeyed Aghamiri and Yasar Balaghi — all live in Iran, making it unlikely they would face justice in an American courtroom. They have been charged with wire fraud, identity theft, providing material support to a terrorist organization and a variety of cybercrimes.
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SKIP ADVERTISEMENT“The defendants’ own words made clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said during a news conference.
The influence campaign described in the indictment suggests that Iran’s cyberskills and ambitions have expanded sharply in recent years, learning from techniques that Russia and China have mastered. It suggests rapid progress over the past 15 years, when Iran created its first “cybercorps,” partly in response to a successful American-Israeli breach into its nuclear production facility at Natanz, destroying hundreds of the country’s nuclear centrifuges.
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