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The hackers – dubbed Cotton Sandstorm by Microsoft and linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – performed reconnaissance and constricted probing of aggregate "election-related websites" successful respective unnamed plaything states. (Reuters)
An Iranian hacking radical is actively scouting U.S. election-related websites and American media outlets arsenic predetermination time nears, according to a Microsoft blog published connected Wednesday. Researchers accidental the enactment suggests “preparations for much nonstop power operations.”
The hackers – dubbed Cotton Sandstorm by Microsoft and linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – performed reconnaissance and constricted probing of aggregate “election-related websites” successful respective unnamed plaything states, the study notes. In May, they besides scanned an unidentified U.S. quality outlet to recognize its vulnerabilities.
“Cotton Sandstorm volition summation its enactment arsenic the predetermination nears fixed the group’s operational tempo and past of predetermination interference,” researchers wrote. The improvement is peculiarly concerning due to the fact that of the group’s past efforts.
A spokesperson for Iran’s ngo to the United Nations said that “such allegations are fundamentally unfounded, and wholly inadmissible.”
“Iran neither has immoderate motive nor intent to interfere successful the U.S. election,” they added.
In 2020, Cotton Sandstorm launched a antithetic cyber-enabled power cognition soon earlier the past statesmanlike election. Posing arsenic the right-wing “Proud Boys,” the hackers sent thousands of emails to Florida residents, threatening them to “vote for Trump oregon else!”.
The radical besides released a video connected societal media, purporting to travel from hacktivists, wherever they showed them probing an predetermination system. While that cognition ne'er affected idiosyncratic voting systems, the extremity was to origin chaos, disorder and doubt, elder U.S. officials said astatine the time.
Following the 2020 election, Cotton Sandstorm besides ran a abstracted cognition that encouraged unit against U.S. predetermination officials who had denied claims of wide elector fraud, Microsoft said.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which is coordinating the national effort to support the predetermination from overseas influence, did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.
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