Onondaga County is among four New York counties that used voting software provided by a U.S. company targeted in a cyber-attack by Russia before the 2016 presidential election, election officials said Wednesday. Onondaga, Cayuga, Cortland and Orange counties used the EVid software from a vendor that partnered with U.S. supplier VR Systems of Florida, said Thomas Connolly, speaking for the New York State Board of Elections. The company’s devices were used by the New York counties as electronic poll books to check voter registration, supplementing existing paper books at selected voting precincts in November as part of a state pilot program, Connolly said. The devices were never linked to live voter registration databases, and state elections officials have found no indication hackers compromised the state’s voting system, Connolly said.
The Russian cyber-attack was disclosed in a top-secret National Security Agency document obtained by the news website The Intercept, which reported Monday that Russian intelligence agents hacked a U.S. voting systems manufacturer in the weeks leading up to the November election.
The Intercept reported that the NSA believes the Russian hackers used the breach to obtain information that was used to send deceptive emails to more than 100 local election officials in the United States.
Full Article: Onondaga among 4 NY counties to use voting software targeted by Russian hackers | syracuse.com.