Meta has disrupted an Iranian cyber group's phishing scheme aimed at the WhatsApp accounts of officials linked to the Trump and Biden administrations, underlining the persistent threat to high-profile figures.
WhatsApp Accounts Targeted by Hackers
According to Reuters, Meta blamed the same Iranian cyber gang that had hacked the Trump campaign earlier this month and claimed on Friday that it had discovered probable phishing attempts on the WhatsApp accounts of US officials from the Trump and Biden administrations.
The effort was characterized by Facebook, Instagram's parent company, as a "small cluster of likely social engineering activity on WhatsApp" involving accounts pretending to be technical help for AOL, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, according to a blog post by the company.
Although it had not found any proof that the targeted WhatsApp accounts had been hijacked, it stopped them after users reported suspicious activity.
Meta Links APT42 to Iranian Military
Meta said that the operation was carried out by APT42, a hacking gang that is notorious for installing spyware on the phones of its targets and is thought to be linked to an Iranian military intelligence section.
Researcher who follows the organization claims that the program allows them to secretly activate microphones and cameras, as well as record calls and steal text messages.
It connected the group's actions to hacking attempts on American presidential campaigns, as revealed earlier this month by Google and Microsoft, in the run-up to November's election.
Political Figures Remain at Risk
Per US News, while the company's blog post did not reveal any names, it did state that hackers "appeared to have focused on political and diplomatic officials, business and other public figures, including some associated with administrations of President Biden and former President Trump."
It went on to say that the US, UK, Iran, the Palestinian territories, and Israel were the bases of operations for those persons.