US accuses Iranian hackers of targeting Trump campaign ahead of Nov 5 election

The US Justice Department on Friday unsealed criminal charges accusing three members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of hacking Donald Trump's presidential campaign and trying to disrupt the Nov. 5 election.

The indictment is the latest effort by the Biden administration to counter foreign efforts to interfere in the presidential election between Trump, a Republican, and his Democratic rival Vice President Kamala Harris. The US Treasury Department also said it was imposing sanctions on seven members of the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Iran said on Thursday that accusations that it had targeted former US officials were baseless. The three men charged were trying to undermine Trump's campaign, Attorney General Merrick Garland told a news conference.

"We are seeing increasingly aggressive Iranian cyber activity during this election cycle," he said. The indictment says the three men engaged in a wide-ranging hacking campaign starting in 2020 that targeted US officials, journalists and campaign operatives in order to stoke discord and erode confidence in the US democratic process.

Charges include wire fraud, identity theft and computer fraud. The three men currently reside in Iran, Garland said. The Trump campaign said in August it had been hacked by Iran but said the perpetrators were not able to get private information.

Several news outlets have said they declined to publish internal campaign documents that were offered to them. The restraint is a marked contrast to the 2016 election, when hacked communications from Democrat Hillary Clinton's campaign received extensive coverage.

The Iranian hacking team, known as APT42 or Charming Kitten, is known for placing surveillance software on mobile phones that allows them to record calls, steal texts and silently turn on cameras and microphones, researchers say.

The Justice Department has also targeted Russian attempts to tamper with the election, bringing criminal charges and sanctions against employees of state media outlet RT for allegedly funding pro-Trump social-media influencers in the United States.