Meta announced on Friday that it had detected possible hacking attempts on the WhatsApp accounts of U.S. officials from both the Joe Biden and Donald Trump administrations.
The tech company linked these attempts to the same Iranian hacker group, APT42, which was previously reported to have compromised the Trump campaign, the Washington Post reported.
In a blog post, Meta described the attempts as a “small cluster of likely social engineering activity” involving accounts impersonating technical support from AOL, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. The company said it had blocked these suspicious accounts after user reports but found no evidence that the targeted WhatsApp accounts were compromised.
APT42, believed to be affiliated with an Iranian military intelligence division, is known for deploying surveillance software that can record calls, steal text messages, and remotely activate cameras and microphones. Meta’s post connected this activity to earlier breaches reported by Microsoft and Google, which targeted U.S. presidential campaigns.
The company did not name the specific individuals affected but noted that the hackers appeared to have targeted political and diplomatic figures, as well as public figures associated with both the Biden and Trump administrations. The targeted individuals were located in Israel, the Palestinian territories, Iran, the U.S., and the U.K.