EDWARDSVILLE - Madison County voters should not worry about their personal information being stolen from the county's voter registration system, said Madison County Clerk Debra Ming-Mendoza.
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This assurance comes in the wake of new hacking allegations being revealed from the FBI. According to a report from Yahoo News this morning, the FBI has found evidence of "foreign hackers" gaining entry into two state voter databases: Arizona and Illinois. After the entries were discovered, Yahoo News reported the Illinois voter database was shut down for 10 days, a claim Ming-Mendoza confirmed.
"I knew they shut their systems down for a while last month," she said.
Jersey County Clerk Pam Warford said she was "very familiar" with the incident.
"We were certainly made aware of the incident," she said. "I am not aware of any specific local incidents related to that. I know they shut down the system for some time, because it was remotely accessed."
Warford could not comment regarding the safety of Jersey County voters' personal information at this time. Ming-Mendoza, however, said Madison County voters should rest assured with the precautions the county takes for its information security.
"My database is secure," she said. "No new registrations have been added without our verification, and none have been deleted since verification. As far as information which could have been hacked, that would not happen to me.”
Ming-Mendoza added she would be made aware of any illegal entry into the county's system, due to its many firewalls and other accessibility measures.
According to the Yahoo News report, two separate IP addresses were used in the hacking, with one appearing in both the Arizona and Illinois breaches. The report noted at least one of the IP addresses has been identified in forums as belonging to a Russian criminal organization.
