As the 2024 US presidential election creeps ever closer, hackers in Iran, Russia and China are stepping up their efforts to interfere in the outcome.
The US intelligence community blamed Iranian actors this week for the hack of Donald Trump's presidential campaign.
Vice-President Kamala Harris's presidential campaign also stated it had been the target of foreign hackers.
Other agencies, including social media giant Meta and Microsoft's threat intelligence body, have warned of an increase in election interference as voting day approaches.
But the methods and motives of these increasing attacks vary from nation to nation.
'The destabilisation of the United States'
Iranian actors believe this year's election to be "particularly consequential" in terms of their potential impact, according to the intelligence community.
A joint statement by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency accused Iran of seeking to "stoke discord".
Their statement also noted that "social engineering", and "thefts and disclosures" form part of those efforts.
"Iran has furthermore demonstrated a longstanding interest in exploiting societal tensions through various means, including through the use of cyber operations to attempt to gain access to sensitive information related to US elections," their statement said.
"It is important to note that this approach is not new.
"Iran and Russia have employed these tactics not only in the United States during this and prior federal election cycles but also in countries around the world."
Iran has denied involvement and labelled the intelligence report "unsubstantiated".
Monash University's Emma Briant is an expert on propaganda and information warfare.
"[Countries] have different kinds of specialisations and technologies that they have honed, but there is also the different strategic interests at stake," Dr Briant said.
"In the Iran case at the moment, whichever direction the election goes in isn't necessarily going to change the situation of Israel and Palestine.
"What they're mostly keen to do is [to] exploit whatever happens in the election.
"They want to exploit the outcome and cause divisions and drive protest, anger, divisive discourses online that support the destabilisation of the United States."
Iranian activity has driven a recent uptick in "foreign malign influence", according to Microsoft Threat Intelligence's recent report released earlier this month.
"Over the past several months, we have seen the emergence of significant influence activity by Iranian actors," the report said.
"Iranian cyber-enabled influence operations have been a consistent feature of at least the last three US election cycles.
"Iran's operations have been notable and distinguishable for appearing later in the election season and employing cyber attacks more geared toward election conduct than swaying voters."
Nalin Arachchilage, an associate professor in cyber security at RMIT University, said the report "clearly articulated" that each nation was using a different strategy for its own objectives.
"Iran focuses on amplifying social issues and distracting trust," he said.
"Whereas Russia engages in creating sensational disinformation, perhaps through fake news disseminated across the social media platforms.
"China has a different perspective to this. They use political content and protests organised through social media to manipulate public opinion.
"The common thing we can see in this process is that they're using social media platforms [and] messaging services to break into people's mindset and change their opinion."
Fake news, fake journalists, and AI content
In recent months, Russian actors have also been accused of attempting to influence the election outcome.
The latest threat report released by Meta noted a "deceptive campaign from Russia" that involved posting fake news stories and uploading AI-generated news content to YouTube.
"They also ran fictitious journalist personas, each with consistent profile photos across the internet," Meta's report said, adding it was a trend they had been "monitoring since 2019".
"Russia remains the number one source of global [coordinated in-authentic behaviour] (CIB) networks we've disrupted to date since 2017, with 39 covert influence operations.
"The next most frequent sources of foreign interference are Iran, with 30 CIB networks, and China, with 11."
Russia-based operations, according to Meta, are expected to share positive stories for election candidates "who oppose aid to Ukraine", and "criticise those who advocate" for Ukraine.
"This could take the shape of blaming economic hardships in the US on providing financial help to Ukraine, painting Ukraine's government as unreliable, or amplifying voices expressing pro-Russia views on the war and its prospects," their report said.
US intelligence agencies have also warned of Russian operatives covertly using social media to sway public opinion.
Dr Arachchilage said Russian actors were more interested in influencing "public opinion and election outcomes".
"[This is] by undermining the trust in democratic institutions and spreading fake content across social media.
"They use a sort of disinformation campaign using deep fake technology ... and inflammatory social media content.
"They often try to create capitalist and sensational narratives [to] easily break into people's mindset and change their opinion to what they want."
'The art of human hacking'
Along with Meta labelling China its third-highest source of CIB operations, Microsoft's report noted influence actors linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continued to engage Americans online.
"[They are] expanding to new platforms and evolving their tactics to engage new audience spaces ahead of November," the report said.
"Beginning in late April through May, the most prolific of these actors ... leveraged hundreds of accounts to stoke outrage around pro-Palestinian protests at US universities."
The report alleged the CCP-linked actor attempted to mimic students involved in the protests, "reacting in real time" and offering directions to protest locations.
"Some of these accounts seeded left-leaning messages into right-wing groups," the report said.
"[This was] likely either to further agitate conflict about the protests or misunderstanding which US audiences would be most receptive to their intended message."
Other CCP-linked accounts have pivoted to "short-form video content" criticising the Biden administration, sometimes racking up "hundreds of thousands of views".
A US intelligence report circulated in March alleged an "ambitious but anxious" China was demonstrating a higher level of "sophistication" in its influence activity.
It said social media accounts "run by a [People's Republic of China] PRC propaganda arm" had begun to experiment with generative AI and target candidates as early as the 2022 midterm election cycle.
"The PRC may attempt to influence the US elections in 2024 at some level because of its desire to sideline critics of China and magnify US societal divisions," the report said.
"PRC actors have increased their capabilities to conduct covert influence operations and disseminate disinformation.
"Even if Beijing sets limits on these activities, individuals not under its direct supervision may attempt election influence activities they perceive are in line with Beijing's goals."
[deepfake tweet]Dr Arachchilage said: "By and large everybody is trying to use social media platforms, that could be Facebook, Twitter [X], Instagram, any media that we have, to disrupt the trust in the 2024 election.
"I think what they're trying to do is social engineering, the art of human hacking, breaking into people's mindset to change their opinion," he said.
"The art of human hacking is a challenging thing, but we need to have the legislation, regulation, even technical and non-technical counter-measures developed to protect the nation.
"Otherwise this is going to be a threat to national democracy."
