Google says state-based hackers have targeted the campaigns of President Donald Trump and former vice-president Joe Biden, although it saw no evidence the phishing attempts were successful.
The company confirmed the findings after the director of its Threat Analysis Group, Shane Huntley, disclosed the attempts Thursday on Twitter.
Huntley said a Chinese group known as Hurricane Panda targeted Trump campaign staffers while an Iranian outfit known as Charming Kitten had attempted to breach accounts of Biden campaign workers.
Such phishing attempts typically involve forged emails with links designed to harvest passwords or infect devices with malware.
The effort targeted personal email accounts of staffers in both campaigns, according to the company statement.
A Google spokesman said "the timeline is recent and that a couple of people were targeted on both campaigns". He would not say how many.
Google said it sent targeted users "our standard government-backed attack warning" and referred the incidents to federal law enforcement.
Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, called the announcement "a major disclosure of potential cyber-enabled influence operations, just as we saw in 2016".
His tweet referred to the Russian hacking of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent online release of internal emails - some doctored - that US investigators determined sought to assist the Trump campaign.
Neither the Biden nor the Trump campaign would not say how many staffers were targeted, when the attempts took place or whether the phishing was successful.
Australian Associated Press
