A cyber group connected to Iran threatened to release emails it claims stem from Trump officials and associates. The report has been dismissed as a “smear campaign” in light of recent U.S. and Iranian tensions.
“A hostile foreign adversary is threatening to illegally exploit purportedly stolen and unverified material in an effort to distract, discredit, and divide,” Marci McCarthy, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s (CISA) Director of Public Affairs, said in a statement. “This so-called cyber ‘attack’ is nothing more than digital propaganda, and the targets are no coincidence. This is a calculated smear campaign meant to damage President Trump and discredit honorable public servants who serve our country with distinction. These criminals will be found and they will be brought to justice. Let this be a warning to others, there will be no refuge, tolerance, or leniency for these actions.”
FBI Director Kash Patel told Reuters that anyone affiliated with “any kind of breach of national security will be fully investigated and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
The FBI, CISA, Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center (DC3), and the National Security Agency (NSA) published a fact sheet detailing the need for “increased vigilance for potential cyber activity against U.S. critical infrastructure by Iranian state-sponsored or affiliated threat actors,” although the agencies noted that they “have not seen indications of a coordinated campaign of malicious cyber activity in the U.S. that can be attributed to Iran.”
Although there is not believed to be a current coordinated malicious cyber campaign, the fact sheet acknowledges that “Iranian-aligned hacktivists have increasingly conducted website defacements and leaks of sensitive information exfiltrated from victims” over the last several months. “These hacktivists are likely to significantly increase distributed denial of service (DDoS) campaigns against U.S. and Israeli websites due to recent events,” the document explains.
