A Chinese group known as Hurricane Panda targeted Trump campaign
staffers while an Iranian outfit known as Charming Kitten had attempted to
breach accounts of Biden campaign workers.
Google said
state-based hackers have targeted the campaigns of both President Donald
Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, although it saw no evidence that
the phishing attempts were successful.
The company confirmed the findings after the director of its Threat Analysis Group, Shane Huntley, disclosed the attempts Thursday on Twitter.
Huntley said a
Chinese group known as Hurricane Panda targeted Trump campaign staffers while
an Iranian outfit known as Charming Kitten had attempted to breach accounts of
Biden campaign workers.
Such phishing
attempts typically involve forged emails with links designed to harvest
passwords or infect devices with malware.
The effort
targeted personal email accounts of staffers in both campaigns, according to
the company statement. A Google
spokesman added that "the timeline is recent and that a couple of people
were targeted on both campaigns. He would not say how many.
Google said it
sent targeted users our standard government-backed attack warning and referred
the incidents to federal law enforcement.
Graham Brookie,
director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, called the
announcement a major disclosure of potential cyber-enabled influence operations,
just as we saw in 2016.
