Analysis from EIP:

This week has seen a flurry of activity related to potential voter suppression, starting with the sending of threatening emails, purportedly from the Proud Boys, to voters in several states; the release of a video purporting to show the hacking of voter registration databases; and finally the attribution of this activity to the Islamic Republic of Iran by the United States Government.

In addition to their announcement of Iranian involvement, the FBI also announced that both Russian and Iranian actors had separately obtained US voter information. The reporting of this activity has raised many questions, and we will use this post to outline what we know and what we suspect about these incidents.

The key takeaways:

• The technical evidence supports the assertion that the “Proud Boys” were not responsible for sending the initial threatening emails.
• The video purporting to show a live attack against a voter database was very likely staged.
• The voter data contained in that video appears to be legitimate, but could have been obtained in a variety of ways.
• The implication from the video — that there is widespread voter fraud powered by stolen voting data — is false.
• Our team noticed a mistake in redaction in the video and reported this to the authorities. This mistake has led to the discovery of a large number of potential other systems used by this actor.
• We cannot provide independent attribution to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
• This incident raises important issues about the practices of states around voter rolls, particularly Alaska. 
• This campaign is intended to decrease voter confidence in U.S. electoral processes. There is no evidence of the wide-scale compromise or fraud that these actors claim to show….