A Florida election software company targeted by Russians in 2016 inadvertently opened a potential pathway for hackers to tamper with voter records in North Carolina on the eve of the presidential election, POLITICO reported on Wednesday, citing a document and a person with knowledge. From the report: VR Systems, based in Tallahassee but with customers in eight states, used what's known as remote-access software to connect for several hours to a central computer in Durham County, N.C., to troubleshoot problems with the company's voter list management tool, the person said. The software distributes voter lists to so-called electronic poll books, which poll workers use to check in voters and verify their eligibility to cast a ballot.

The company did not respond to POLITICO's requests for comment about its practices. But election security experts widely condemn remote connections to election-related computer systems -- not only because they can open a door for intruders but because they can also give attackers access to an entire network, depending on how they're configured. In Durham County's case, the computer in question communicated with North Carolina's State Board of Elections to download the county's voter list before elections, which could have potentially opened a gateway to the state system as well.

The European Union's embassy in Moscow was hacked and had information stolen from its network, according to a leaked internal document seen by BuzzFeed News. From the report: An ongoing "sophisticated cyber espionage event" was discovered in April, just weeks before the European Parliament elections -- but the European External Action Service (EEAS), the EU's foreign and security policy agency, did not disclose the incident publicly. Russian entities are believed to be behind the hack, a source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told BuzzFeed News.

The EEAS confirmed an incident had taken place and, asked whether the EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini knew about the incident, said that EEAS hierarchy had been informed. "We have observed potential signs of compromised systems connected to our unclassified network in our Moscow Delegation. Measures have been taken and the investigation is in progress -- at this stage we cannot comment further," a spokesperson said. According to the leaked document, the initial attack took place in February 2017 but it was only detected in April this year. An analysis of the hack found activity affecting at least two computers and concluded that information had been stolen. However, officials have no idea how much and exactly what kind of information was taken during the attack.