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The company said:Meta“Friday, it said it had detected possible hacking attempts on the accounts of US officials from the administrations of President Joe Biden And the former president Donald Trump On WhatsApp, she blamed it on an Iranian hacking group that reportedly breached the Trump campaign earlier this month.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, described the hack attempt in a post as a “small cluster of potentially malicious activity on WhatsApp” involving accounts impersonating tech support for AOL andGoogle andYahoo andMicrosoft.
The company said it banned the accounts after users reported the activity as suspicious, and explained that they had not seen any evidence that the targeted WhatsApp accounts had been hacked.
Meta attributed the activity to APT42, a hacking group widely believed to be linked to an intelligence division within the Iranian military and known to install surveillance software on its victims' mobile phones.
Spyware
Researchers tracking the group say the software allows them to record calls, intercept text messages, and turn on cameras and microphones without the person's knowledge.
The company linked the group's activity to attempts to hack US presidential campaigns that Microsoft and Google reported earlier this month ahead of the US presidential election in November.
Meta did not name the people targeted in its post, saying only that the hackers “appear to have focused on political officials, diplomats, business people, and other public figures, including some associated with the Biden and former Trump administrations.”
The company added that these figures reside in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Iran, the United States and the United Kingdom.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations denied days ago that it had any role in the cyber attack that targeted the Republican presidential candidate's campaign. Donald Trumpand challenged Washington to provide evidence to support this claim.
“Such allegations are baseless and lack any credibility,” the mission said in a statement, stressing that Iran has no intention or motive to interfere in the US presidential election.
