Meta has blocked WhatsApp accounts involved in “a small cluster of likely social engineering activity” on the service, tracing the activity to APT42. The company revealed that the suspicious activity on WhatsApp attempted to target individuals in Israel, Palestine, Iran, the United States, and the UK, focusing on political and diplomatic officials and individuals associated with both presidential candidates. The bad actors pretended to be technical support representatives from AOL, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft, prompting targets to report the activity to Meta and initiate an investigation. While Meta believes the perpetrators’ efforts were unsuccessful and the targets’ accounts were not compromised, the company still reported the malicious activity to law enforcement and shared information with both presidential campaigns. Additionally, Google published a report detailing APT42 targeting high-profile users in Israel and the US, including unsuccessful attempts to compromise accounts linked to President Biden, Vice President Harris, and former President Trump. Despite these unsuccessful attempts, APT42 successfully infiltrated the account of at least one high-profile victim, Roger Stone, using his account to send more phishing emails to his contacts after falling victim to the Iranian hackers.
