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Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) said on Aug. 14, 2024, that an Iranian government-backed group called APT42 targeted the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people affiliated with President Biden and former President Trump. Google blocked numerous login attempts, but said APT42 did gain access to the personal Gmail account of a high-profile political consultant. The report did not name the consultant, and it described targeting of individuals’ personal accounts—not a confirmed breach of either campaign’s computer systems.
What Google reported—and what it did not
In its Aug. 14, 2024, report, Google TAG identified APT42 as an Iranian government-backed threat actor associated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Google described activity aimed at people connected to the U.S. presidential election, including people affiliated with both major campaigns.
The distinction between targeting and access matters. Google said it blocked numerous attempts to log in to targeted personal email accounts, while also reporting one successful intrusion: access to a high-profile political consultant’s personal Gmail account. Google did not identify that person. Its report does not say that APT42 breached the Biden or Trump campaign organizations as a whole.
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Google’s report covered a broader APT42 campaign against users in Israel and the United States between February and late July 2024. The election-related activity was one part of that effort.
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| Period | What Google reported |
|---|---|
| February to late July 2024 | APT42 heavily targeted users in Israel and the United States. Google said those two countries made up roughly 60% of APT42’s known geographic targeting during that period. |
| May and June 2024 | Targets included the personal email accounts of roughly a dozen people affiliated with President Biden and former President Trump. Google blocked numerous login attempts and observed successful access to one high-profile political consultant’s personal Gmail account. |
| After the initial election-related targeting | Google said it continued to observe unsuccessful attempts involving people affiliated with Biden, Vice President Harris and Trump. In early July, it referred the activity to law enforcement and warned targeted accounts. |
The figures and timeline in this table are Google TAG’s account in its Aug. 14, 2024, report. They describe known targeting observed by Google, not a complete count of every attempted attack.
How APT42’s phishing operation worked
Google described an operation built around reconnaissance and tailored social engineering. Rather than relying on a single generic email, APT42 researched targets and tried to make messages and sign-in prompts look relevant and trustworthy.
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1. Build a plausible pretext
The group impersonated organizations and registered domains that resembled legitimate ones. Google cited lookalike domains associated with the Institute for the Study of War and Brookings as examples. It also said the attackers researched victims’ account-security settings and geographic locations, information that could help make a login or account-recovery attempt appear credible.
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Phishing links could appear directly in an email or inside an otherwise benign PDF attachment. Those links led to imitation pages styled as services such as Google Meet, Google Sites, OneDrive, Dropbox or Skype. A malicious redirect could send a visitor through one or more pages before presenting the credential-harvesting site.
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3. Capture credentials and verification information
Google named phishing kits used by APT42, including GCollection, LCollection and YCollection. According to Google, these kits could harvest Google, Hotmail and Yahoo credentials and were designed to capture additional authentication information, including multi-factor authentication details, device PINs and one-time recovery codes. That capability helps explain why a convincing phishing attempt can pose a risk even to an account that uses multi-factor authentication: an attacker may try to steal the information needed during a sign-in or recovery flow.
What Google did after detecting the activity
Google said it reset compromised accounts, sent government-backed attacker warnings to targeted users, updated its detections, disrupted malicious Google Sites pages and added malicious domains and URLs to Safe Browsing blocklists. It also referred the activity to law enforcement.
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Google said it had systematically disrupted APT42’s ability to abuse Google Sites in more than 50 similar campaigns. That number refers to campaigns disrupted by Google; it is not a count of the election-related targets or successful account intrusions.
What high-risk users can do
Google recommended its Advanced Protection Program (APP) for people at elevated risk of targeted attacks, including elected officials, candidates, campaign staff, journalists, election workers and government officials. Google describes APP as a free, opt-in program intended to prevent unauthorized sign-ins even if an attacker knows the account password.
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For campaign teams and other high-risk groups, the incident also illustrates why personal accounts deserve attention alongside organizational systems. A targeted person can use a personal email account to communicate about work, receive sensitive information or reset access to other services. Useful precautions include:
Quick Recap
- Enroll eligible high-risk users in Advanced Protection. Follow Google’s current enrollment and recovery requirements for the account before relying on it for sensitive communications.
- Treat unexpected sign-in links cautiously. A familiar organization name, meeting invitation or PDF does not establish that the destination is genuine. Navigate to a service directly when practical instead of entering credentials through an emailed link.
- Secure account recovery as carefully as the password. Do not share one-time codes, recovery codes or device PINs in response to a message or sign-in prompt you did not initiate.
- Respond quickly to account warnings. Use the provider’s account-security controls to review activity, change credentials where appropriate and follow any recovery steps if an account may have been accessed.
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