California accused the U.S. government on Friday of being dishonest after being notified Friday that the state was targeted by “Russian government cyber actors” in an attempt to hack election systems last year.
Although DHS confirmed there was no evidence any of the systems were breached or compromised, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla expressed concern regarding the timeliness of the alert.
A DHS official revealed in June during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing that 21 states had been targeted, however, officials refused to reveal which states were impacted. “We are concerned, however, that in June 2017, Jeanette Manfra, Acting Undersecretary for Cybersecurity and Communications at DHS testified before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee that ‘the owners of the systems within those 21 states have been notified,'” Padilla said. “This was simply not true and DHS acknowledged they failed to contact us and ‘two or three’ other states.”
“It is completely unacceptable that it has taken DHS over a year to inform our office of Russian scanning of our systems, despite our repeated requests for information,” he added. “The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.”
Additional states that confirmed they were targets are Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Washington, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The Associated Press reported that in most cases the breaches were not successful, but didn’t specify which ones were a success.
Special counsel Robert Mueller, alongside a number of congressional committees, is investigating Russian interference into the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.
