FLOYD COUNTY — Floyd County Clerk Christy Eurton is confident that no voter information was compromised in the 2016 general election through the use of VR Systems, voting software that news reports say was the target of Russian cyberattacks.
Floyd County is one of six Indiana counties that uses VR Systems, according to a report by the Indianapolis Star. Leaked documents from the National Security Agency indicate VR Systems was the target of an attack last August, as first reported by The Intercept.
In Floyd County, VR Systems supports electronic pollbooks, which is how voters sign in. Eurton said it's not "in any way, shape or form" connected to voting machines.
"Our voting system, our touch screens, our tabulation screens — they're not even hackable because you can't even get to an internet site off of those machines," she said.
If voter information had been compromised, Eurton said her office would have received an alert.
"I believe there's enough securities and policies in place [to prevent compromised data]," she said. "The data goes back and forth between VR Systems, up to the statewide voter registration system and then down through our system here locally. None of those three showed any signs of it."
On Monday, VR Systems released a statement noting none of its products relate to vote tabulations.
"When a customer alerted us to an obviously fraudulent email purporting to come from VR Systems, we immediately notified all our customers and advised them not to click on the attachment. We are only aware of a handful of our customers who actually received the fraudulent email and of those, we have no indication that any of them clicked on the attachment or were compromised as a result."
Eurton said no one in the Floyd County Clerk's Office received this fraudulent email.
The five other Indiana counties that used VR Systems in last year's election are Cass, Montgomery, Vanderburgh, Vigo and Wayne, according to The Indianapolis Star. Polls in seven other U.S. states also used the Florida-based election software.
A spokesman for the Indiana Secretary of State's office said the office was not notified when the attack happened last year.
"Federal authorities made state election administrators aware of the attack in general, and said they would follow up with systems that had been affected," spokesman Ian Hauer said. "We have not been notified that any Indiana systems have been breached and Floyd County has not reported any issues."
All voting equipment in Indiana is certified by the Voting System Technical Oversight Program, or VSTOP, housed at Ball State University. VSTOP tests each voting machine and electronic pollbook for security and technical issues, and advises the Secretary of State's office and the Indiana Election Division.
"Our office always stands by ready to offer assistance to county election administrators, but we do not provide any oversight when it comes to e-pollbooks," Hauer said.
An electronic pollbook contains a voter's name, address and date of birth — but nothing more, Hauer said. He reiterated that electronic pollbooks aren't connected to voting machines.
FBI agents announced Monday they had arrested a U.S. government contractor on charges that she leaked classified information to a news outlet, the Associated Press reported. Reality Winner, the 25-year-old contractor, is scheduled for a hearing Thursday in U.S. District Court that will decide whether she will be released on bond pending a trial.
The FBI hasn't named the news outlet. Winner's arrest was announced the same day The Intercept published a report that Russians targeted VR Systems last fall. That report held the same date of the report Winner leaked, according to court documents.
Winner's hearing is the same day former FBI director James Comey is set to appear before the U.S. Senate intelligence committee. Comey is expected to detail an account of the events that led to his firing by President Trump last month.
The committee is also expected to ask Comey about Russian attempts to interfere in the presidential election.