Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Twitter Removes Iran-Linked Accounts Aimed at Disrupting U.S. Presidential Debate

Twitter on Wednesday announced that it removed 130 accounts originating from Iran that were aimed at disrupting the first 2020 U.S. presidential debate.

The accounts, the social media platform reveals, were removed after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alerted it on the suspicious activity.

Twitter on Wednesday announced that it removed 130 accounts originating from Iran that were aimed at disrupting the first 2020 U.S. presidential debate.

The accounts, the social media platform reveals, were removed after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) alerted it on the suspicious activity.

“Based on intel provided by the @FBI, last night we removed approximately 130 accounts that appeared to originate in Iran. They were attempting to disrupt the public conversation during the first 2020 US Presidential Debate,” Twitter announced.

The social platform also explains that it was able to quickly identify the accounts and remove them. The accounts had low engagement and weren’t able to impact the public conversation.

The company says that, once its investigation into these accounts has been completed, it will publish all of the necessary details on its Transparency portal.

“As standard, the accounts and their content will be published in full once our investigation is complete. We’re providing this notice to keep people updated in real time about our actions. We wish to thank the @FBI for their assistance,” Twitter said.

The removal of these accounts comes roughly one month after Microsoft warned of attempts from state-sponsored threat actors, including Iranian ones, to disrupt the 2020 U.S. presidential elections. Iran responded swiftly, claiming the allegations were absurd.

Last week, Facebook announced that it shut down a network of fake accounts out of China that were aiming at the US presidential race.

In June, Twitter announced the removal of a total of 30,000 state-linked accounts originating from China, Turkey, and Russia that engaged in manipulation.

Over the past couple of weeks, the FBI and CISA issued several alerts to warn of disinformation campaigns aimed hurting the population’s trust in the election results and the security of voting systems.

Related: Security of Post-Election Vote Count Top Worry: US Official

Related: Foreign Threats Loom Ahead of US Presidential Election

Related: 2016 Again? Russia Back to Stirring Chaos in U.S. Election

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Management & Strategy

SecurityWeek examines how a layoff-induced influx of experienced professionals into the job seeker market is affecting or might affect, the skills gap and recruitment...

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Cybercrime

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Data Breaches

LastPass DevOp engineer's home computer hacked and implanted with keylogging malware as part of a sustained cyberattack that exfiltrated corporate data from the cloud...

Application Security

PayPal is alerting roughly 35,000 individuals that their accounts have been targeted in a credential stuffing campaign.