September 27, 2024 / by emptywheel

 

Iranian Hackers Compromised Roger Stone’s Email Eight Years After Russian Hackers Exfiltrated DNC Emails

DOJ unsealed the indictment against three Iranian hackers it accuses of targeting Donald Trump’s campaign (as well as a bunch of other victims, including one of his top State Department officials).

Perhaps the most remarkable detail is this.

On May 25, 2016, Russian hackers started exfiltrating the emails from the DNC that Trump and his rat-fucker would exploit to beat Hillary Clinton.

On May 23, 2024 — two days short of eight years, to the day — Iranian hackers first compromised one of two Roger Stone email accounts they hacked.

As noted, Trump waited to call the FBI, in part because Susie Wiles was worried the FBI would make them hand over their email server (as Hillary had done during the campaign where Trump beat her). As a result, Iranian hackers remained in the account of Victim 11 — from whom they stole the JD Vance vetting materials, among other things — for two months.

According to the indictment, Iranian hackers were in Roger Stone’s account (what must be his Hotmail account) for almost a month, from May 24 to June 20.

 

On June 15, the hackers used Roger’s account to try to hack another Trump account (probably Susie Wiles), though that failed, which may have led Microsoft to cop on, leading to the expulsion of hackers from the Hotmail account.

After they were kicked out of that account they got into his Gmail account, apparently for a day.

Now, I might allow myself to feel a touch of schadenfreude that Roger Stone has been victimized in the same kind of influence operation he exploited against Hillary.

Except for this: As I keep saying, one of the reasons this is worse — more dangerous — than what happened to Hillary is that these people are also trying to exact revenge for the killing of Qasem Soleimani. The indictment says that almost verbatim: One of the goals of this operation was to “steal information relating to current and former U.S. officials that could be used to advance the IRGC’s malign activities, including ongoing efforts to avenge the death of Qasem Soleimani.” The indictment describes that the hackers successfully targeted someone who played a key role in the Abraham Accords in Trump’s State Department, then started making travel reservations for the person using their stolen passport.

They’re not just using this information to affect the election. They’re using it to track people.

It turns out it was never fun and games.

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Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2024/09/27/iranian-hackers-compromised-roger-stones-email-eight-years-after-russian-hackers-exfiltrated-dnc-emails/