Google announced Wednesday that a hacking campaign allegedly carried out by Iran against US presidential campaigns continues and is more widespread than previously thought. The hackers are continuing to target email accounts of US officials, including Vice President Kamala Harris and those associated with President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Google researchers revealed in a blog that in May and June, hackers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked the email accounts of a dozen individuals associated with Biden, Trump and current government officials. Google researchers report that Iranian hackers are still trying to hack into accounts associated with Biden and Trump, Harris, as well as both presidential campaigns.

Google’s research is a new piece of evidence that Iran has been aggressively collecting intelligence for the presidential campaign in 2024. CNN and other outlets reported last week that suspected Iranian hackers breached Roger Stone’s personal email account in order to infiltrate Trump’s campaign.

Google announced on Wednesday that the Iranian hackers had successfully hacked into the Gmail account “of a high-profile politician consultant”. When asked whether this political consultant is Stone or another, a company spokesperson declined comment. Google said it passed information to law enforcement about hacking activities in early July. The company is still cooperating.

The Harris campaign confirmed Tuesday that they had been the target of a “foreign influence operation,” though it said there were no security breaches in their systems as a result of those efforts.

US intelligence officials and national security officials are preparing to counter foreign attempts to influence or monitor 2024 elections. The alleged Iranian hacking is the first shot across the bow.

“With less that 100 days until the elections, it’s clear that our adversaries from abroad are keenly interested in disrupting democracy,” said Sens. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, and Marco Rubio the top Republican on the committee, released a joint statement on Wednesday.

A US intelligence assessment published last month stated that Russia “remains a predominant threat” to U.S. election. According to US intelligence officials the Russians’ preferences in the presidential race have not changed since 2020. At that time, Moscow carried out a variety of influence operations aimed at defaming Biden and supporting Trump.

The June hacking attempt by Iran against the Trump campaign sparked a panic within the Trump campaign and the FBI, who spotted the intrusion, in order to contain the incident, and determine if Iran was posing a larger cyber threat. Microsoft published a report stating that the hacking activity by the IRGC-backed groups targeted an unnamed campaign.

Politico reported first on Saturday that in addition to the hacking attempt, an email account using a pseudonym has leaked documents from Trump’s campaign to media outlets. It is not clear whether the hacking and leak are related.

The Trump campaign blamed Iran for leaking the documents. However, the US government is yet to determine who was responsible for either the hacking or leak and whether the two incidents were connected.

The Iranian government denied these allegations. The Iranian government has denied the allegations.

Shadowy targeting of political campaign has brought back memories for US lawmakers and officials from 2016, when according to US intelligence Russian spies stole and leaked documents from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign in an attempt to undermine Clinton.

Google told the two campaigns that they are “seeing increased malicious activity from foreign state actors”, and stressed “the importance” of “enhanced account security protections for personal email accounts”.

The Russian intelligence service’s use of bots and trolls in the 2016 US elections was a new way for foreign agents to try to influence American citizens. Since then, foreign meddling has become more common.

Iran surprised some US officials with its aggressiveness in targeting US voters for the 2020 elections. According to the Justice Department, Iranian operatives impersonated far-right Proud Boys in an attempt to intimidate US voters. They also created a website which threatened election officials.

William Evanina said that Iran has both the capability and intent to influence the US elections through influence operations. Evanina was the former director of National Counterintelligence and Security Center (US counterintelligence agency). He said that Tehran is willing and able to take on risks other governments might not.

Evanina, who was referring to roughly 90 days before Election Day, said: “I think they will be aggressive in the next 90-days for sure.”