Mehta said Iranian hackers who targeted both the Democratic and Republican presidential campaigns also sought to target some of the Biden and Trump administration staff.
in update As part of its threat prevention efforts, Meta said it had discovered “a small group of what appeared to be social engineering activities” on WhatsApp, which its security team had blocked after investigating and receiving reports from users.
Mehta said the malicious activity originated in Iran and aimed to attack people in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the US and the UK.
“The effort appears to have been focused on political and diplomatic figures and other individuals, including those associated with the administrations of President Biden and former President Trump,” Mehta said.
Former President Trump’s campaign said earlier this month that it had been hacked by Iran.
The FBI and other intelligence agencies announced Monday that they had concluded that Iran carried out the hacks on the Trump campaign in an attempt to disrupt the U.S. presidential election.
The accounts posing as technical support for AOL, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft were part of a phishing scam aimed at stealing credentials to people’s online accounts, the tech company said in a statement.
“The vigilance with which these users reported the messages to us suggests that these efforts were unsuccessful. We have seen no evidence that their accounts were compromised,” Mehta said.
Meta said it urges public figures, journalists, political candidates and campaign workers to “remain vigilant” by utilizing privacy and security settings, not responding to messages from people they don’t know and reporting any suspicious activity.
