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Iranian operatives have ramped up their attempts to influence and monitor the US presidential election by creating fake news outlets targeting liberal and conservative voters and by trying to hack an unnamed presidential campaign, Microsoft said in research published late Thursday.
One of the phony news sites allegedly created by Iranian operatives called former President Donald Trump an “opioid-pilled elephant in the MAGA china shop” and a “raving mad litigiosaur,” Microsoft researchers said.
Another fake Iran-backed outlet describes itself as a “trusted source for conservative news” in Savannah, Georgia, and focuses on LGBTQ issues and gender reassignment, according to Microsoft. Neither site has gained much traction on social media, but that could change as the election draws nearer, according to Microsoft.
The report – compiled from open-source materials and Microsoft’s vast supply of internal data – offers some of the clearest public examples yet of what US intelligence officials described last month as an ongoing covert social media campaign by Iran to undercut Trump’s candidacy and to increase “social discord” in the US ahead of the November election.
The report also underscores how the number of foreign actors trying to sow divisions around US elections has continued to grow since the Kremlin’s sweeping effort to influence the 2016 election.
The Iranians have “laid the groundwork for influence campaigns on trending election-related topics and begun to activate these campaigns in an apparent effort to stir up controversy or sway voters – especially in swing states,” Clint Watts, general manager of the Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, said in a blog post.
A hacking group linked with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in June also tried to break into the email account of a high-ranking official on a US presidential campaign, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft said it notified the campaign of the hacking attempt, but declined to say publicly which campaign it was.
“Microsoft has not notified us of any campaign accounts having been targeted in this manner,” an official with Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign told CNN. CNN has requested comment from the Trump campaign.
Russian operatives, meanwhile, have since April, tried to “drive headlines with fake scandals” that falsely claim that the CIA told a Ukrainian troll farm to disrupt the upcoming US election, that the FBI wiretapped Trump’s residence and that Ukrainian soldiers burned an effigy of Trump, according to Microsoft.
Chinese online personas have tried to use hundreds of thousands of online accounts to amplify outrage around the pro-Palestinian protests at US universities this spring, the Microsoft report said.
The Iranian, Russian and Chinese governments routinely deny allegations of election influence operations.
It is not unusual during US presidential campaigns for hackers associated with the Iranian, Russian and Chinese intelligence services to try to collect intelligence on campaign positions or personnel. In 2020, Microsoft warned that the same group of Iranian hackers was targeting Trump’s reelection campaign, while Chinese hackers were targeting associates of Joe Biden’s campaign.
US officials are bracing for a range for foreign intelligence services to try to influence or undermine confidence in the 2024 US elections by exploiting an already-fraught domestic environment in which many Americans believe lies about voter fraud.
Russia “remains the predominant threat to U.S. elections,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in a recent assessment. US officials have also warned that Russian operatives and propagandists are planning to “covertly use social media” in an attempt to undermine support for Ukraine in swing states during the election.
China “probably does not plan to influence the outcome” of the US presidential election, but US intelligence is monitoring the possibility that China-linked propagandists and influence actors could “denigrate down-ballot candidates,” the ODNI assessment states.
The alleged Iranian threats to the Trump candidacy have not just been online.
US authorities obtained intelligence from a human source in recent weeks on a plot by Iran to try to assassinate Trump, a development that led to the Secret Service increasing security around the former president, CNN first reported on July 16. The Justice Department on August 6 announced charges against a Pakistani man with alleged ties to the Iranian government for allegedly seeking to carry out political assassinations.
Iran has denied the assassination plot allegations.
As president, Trump ordered the killing of top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and he withdrew from a multilateral deal aimed at curbing Tehran’s nuclear program. Iran has vowed revenge for Soleimani’s death.
