US claims Iran is behind a wave of emails purporting to be from right-wing Proud Boys group that threatened registered Democrat voters with repercussions if they didn’t vote for Trump.
In a short press conference held today by the US Department of Justice, high-ranking officials with the US government claimed that Iran was behind a wave of emails sent to US voters earlier this week. Spoofing the identity of violent extremist group Proud Boys, the emails threatened registered Democrat voters with repercussions if they didn’t vote for Donald Trump in the upcoming US Presidential Election. The senders claimed to have «gained access into the entire [US] voting infrastructure,» but appeared to use public voter registration databases to target Democrat voters in Alaska, Arizona, and Florida. Two waves of emails were sent this week, the first on Tuesday (October 20), and the second on Wednesday (October 21), according to a report from email security firm Proofpoint, which has been tracking the spam campaigns. The second wave of emails, besides the original message threatening Democrat voters, also included a link to a video claiming to show an individual print out a voting ballot with another person’s information (a copy of the video is embedded in the Proofpoint report).
