The hacking of presidential campaigns begins, with the usual fog of motives

For the third presidential election in a row, the foreign hacking of the campaigns has begun in earnest.

On Friday, Microsoft released a report declaring that a hacking group run by the intelligence unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard had successfully breached the account of a “former senior adviser” to a presidential campaign. From that account, Microsoft said, the group sent fake email messages, known as “spear phishing,” to “a high-ranking official of a presidential campaign” in an effort to break into the campaign’s own accounts and databases.