Iranian and Russian Entities Sanctioned for Election Interference Using AI and Cyber Tactics

The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Tuesday leveled sanctions against two entities in Iran and Russia for their attempts to interfere with the November 2024 presidential election.

The federal agency said the entities – a subordinate organization of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a Moscow-based affiliate of Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) – sought to influence the electoral outcome and divide the American people through targeted disinformation campaigns.

“As affiliates of the IRGC and GRU, these actors aimed to stoke socio-political tensions and influence the U.S. electorate during the 2024 U.S. election,” it noted in a press release.

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In August 2024, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) jointly accused Iran of attempting to undermine democratic processes, including by orchestrating cyber operations designed to gain access to sensitive information related to the elections.

Around the same time, Meta revealed that it blocked WhatsApp accounts used by Iranian threat actors to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the U.K., and the U.S. The campaign was attributed to an IRGC-affiliated hacking crew codenamed Charming Kitten.

A month later, U.S. federal prosecutors unsealed criminal charges against three Iranian nationals allegedly employed with the IRGC for targeting current and former government personnel to siphon sensitive data.

In tandem, the Treasury Department also sanctioned seven individuals for conducting spear-phishing, hack-and-leak operations, as well as interfering with political campaigns in 2020 and 2024.

The latest Iranian entity to fall under the purview of U.S. sanctions is the Cognitive Design Production Center (CDPC), a subsidiary of the IRGC that’s said to have planned influence operations designed to incite socio-political tensions in the lead up to the 2024 elections.

Also sanctioned by OFAC is a Moscow-based entity called the Center for Geopolitical Expertise (CGE), which works directly with a GRU unit responsible for sabotage, political interference operations, and cyber warfare aimed at the West.

It was founded in late December 2020 as a non-profit by Aleksandr Dugin, who was previously sanctioned by the U.S. in March 2015 for being “complicit in actions or policies that threaten the peace, security, stability, or sovereignty or territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

CGE, per the Treasury Department, “directs and subsidizes the creation and publication of deepfakes and circulated disinformation,” using generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools to create synthetic content at scale and distribute them across bogus websites masquerading as legitimate news outlets.

“CGE built a server that hosts the generative AI tools and associated AI-created content, in order to avoid foreign web-hosting services that would block their activity,” the agency said.

“The GRU provided CGE and a network of U.S.-based facilitators with financial support to: build and maintain its AI-support server; maintain a network of at least 100 websites used in its disinformation operations; and contribute to the rent cost of the apartment where the server is housed.”

Valery Mikhaylovich Korovin, a GRU officer, is alleged to have carried out these clandestine influence operations targeting the U.S. elections since at least 2024, coordinating financial support from the GRU to his employees and U.S.-based facilitators.

“The Government of the Russian Federation employs an array of tools, including covert foreign malign influence campaigns and illicit cyber activities, to undermine the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States and its allies and partners globally,” the Treasury said.

“The Kremlin has increasingly adapted its efforts to hide its involvement by developing a vast ecosystem of Russian proxy websites, fake online personas, and front organizations that give the false appearance of being independent news sources unconnected to the Russian state.”

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