Harris campaign target of ‘foreign actor influence operation’, according to FBI
Reports that Kamala Harris’s campaign was targeted come after Donald Trump’s campaign claimed it was hacked by an Iranian group earlier this year.
The FBI has told Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign it was the target of a “foreign actor influence operation”.
In a statement, shared with Sky News’s US partner network NBC News, Ms Harris’s campaign said: “In July, the campaign legal and security teams were notified by the FBI that we were targeted by a foreign actor influence operation.
“We have robust cybersecurity measures in place, and are not aware of any security breaches of our systems resulting from those efforts.
“We remain in communication with appropriate law enforcement authorities.”
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It comes after Donald Trump‘s campaign claimed over the weekend that it was hacked by Iran in June, when the Republican nominee was selecting his candidate for vice president.
News website Politico said it had received emails in July from an anonymous source which offered documents from inside the former president’s operation, including a report about running mate JD Vance’s “potential vulnerabilities”.
“These documents were obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said earlier this month.
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Mr Cheung later told NBC that the campaign had been hacked by an Iranian group in June, “which coincides with the close timing of President Trump’s selection of a vice presidential nominee”.
It also comes after the FBI said it was investigating attempts to hack both the Biden-Harris and Trump presidential campaigns on Monday.
It is not the first time that there have been claims of interference in US elections by foreign states.
In 2019, analysis by a former senior FBI officer concluded that Russian hackers used a technology company owned by a Russian businessman to hack Democratic Party officials.
The previous year, the US imposed sanctions on 19 Russians for alleged interference in the 2016 presidential election.
