Iranian state-sponsored threat actors were noted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to have been launching social engineering attacks against government officials, journalists, activists, lobbyists, think tank staff, and other individuals linked to national political organizations across the U.S. in a bid to threaten confidence in the country’s democratic institutions ahead of next month’s presidential election, reports SecurityWeek.

Malicious messages purporting to be interview requests, high-profile event invites, U.S. campaign and election solicitations have been sent by attackers under the guise of known individuals to lure targets into opening a fraudulent email login page that would enable the exfiltration of their credentials, according to the joint advisory, which also warned of other state-backed actors’ exploitation of artificial intelligence in their social engineering campaigns. Such a threat should prompt not only the immediate implementation of phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, password managers, and up-to-date software but also increased vigilance on suspicious emails and unsolicited contacts, said the agencies.