Chinese and Iranian Pro-government hackers attack the campaign headquarters of U.S. President Donald trump and former us Vice-President Joe Biden, said in a post on Twitter Shane HUNTLEY (Huntley Shane), head of Threat Analysis Group in Google.
In comments to the publication TechCrunch, a Google spokesperson said that Iranian group was aimed at hacking into personal email accounts of employees of trump’s campaign, while Chinese hackers attacked the accounts of Biden’s staff. The attacker tried to use phishing to obtain personal data.
the Press secretaries in the campaign said that they know about the attempted attack, but it was not successful. Representatives of the headquarters Biden said from the very beginning assumed that cyber attacks will occur, but to cyber security staff take very seriously.
HUNTLEY said that Google identified hacker groups APT31 (Zirconium) and APT35 (Charming Kitten).
APT31 known attacks on telecommunications and technology companies, as well as non-governmental organizations. A group of Chinese hackers APT35 often breaks the electricity and technology companies, and government organizations.
last year, Microsoft also announced that the group APT 35 tried to crack email campaign headquarters the current President of the United States.
the names of the groups indicate about the goal of APT attacks (eng. advanced persistent threat — “targeted cyber attacks”) usually include establishing and expanding its presence within the information technology infrastructure of targeted organizations for the implementation of the intent of extracting information, disruption or interference to critical aspects of tasks, programs or services; or in order to take a position, allowing to carry out these intentions in the future.
