The United States has billed two Iranian laptop hackers in connection with a cyber-marketing campaign intended to affect the consequence of America’s 2020 presidential election.
An indictment unsealed in New York on Thursday alleges that 24-calendar year-old Seyyed Mohammad Hosein Musa Kazemi and 27-yr-outdated Sajjad Kashian conspired with some others to intimidate and affect American voters, undermine voter self-assurance, and make societal discord.
Starting off in about August 2020, Kazemi, Kashian, and other co-conspirators allegedly commenced a 4-pronged campaign that bundled sending threatening e-mail to voters, hacking into the pc networks of an American media firm, and impersonating a far-ideal firm to cast question over the integrity of electoral ballots.
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In accordance to court docket paperwork, users of the conspiracy exploited a misconfiguration mistake to gain unauthorized access to 1 US state’s computer system and obtain details belonging to additional than 100,000 voters. Attempts have been allegedly created by the conspirators to compromise 11 condition voter internet websites in total.
In October, the conspirators allegedly posed as a “group of Happy Boys volunteers” to deliver Facebook messages and e-mail to Republican senators, Republican members of Congress, persons associated with the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump, White House advisors, and users of the media.
The message contained claims that the Democratic Party was scheduling to exploit “serious security vulnerabilities” in point out voter registration websites to “edit mail-in ballots or even sign up non-existent voters.”
It is alleged that the conspirators also impersonated the Happy Boys to deliver threatening messages to tens of hundreds of voters.
“The email messages ended up despatched to registered Democrats and threatened the recipients with bodily injuries if they did not modify their party affiliation and vote for President Trump,” reported the Division of Justice’s Office of Community Affairs in a statement released Thursday.
Kazemi and Kashian are both charged with one count of conspiracy to commit computer system fraud and abuse, intimidate voters, and transmit interstate threats, one count of voter intimidation, and a person depend of transmission of interstate threats.
Kazemi is also billed with one particular rely of unauthorized laptop intrusion and one rely of laptop or computer fraud.
Equally defendants worked as contractors for Iran-based cybersecurity business Emennet Pasargad, previously acknowledged as Eeleyanet Gostar. Eeleyanet Gostar has furnished services to the Iranian authorities.
Some parts of this post are sourced from:
www.infosecurity-journal.com