North Carolina: In wake of Mueller report, North Carolina elections officials want answers from electronic pollbook vendor | WRAL
North Carolina elections officials want to know whether an unnamed voting technology company that Robert Mueller’s report says was compromised by Russian hackers is the same firm that supplies poll book software to more than a dozen counties across the state. In a letter to VR Systems sent Thursday afternoon, State Board of Elections General Counsel Josh Lawson asked the company to provide “immediate, written assurance” about the security of its products, which came under fire two years ago when a leaked intelligence report named the company as the target of a Russian hacking attempt known as “spearphishing.” Mueller’s report, released in a redacted form Thursday morning, notes that, in August 2016, Russian intelligence officers targeted a “voting technology company that developed software used by numerous U.S. counties to manage voter rolls,” installing malicious code on the company’s network. The name of the firm is blacked out due to “personal privacy” exemptions. Lawson said, based on the leaked intelligence report and a separate 2017 federal indictment, that VR Systems was a target of the GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency.