The Department of Homeland Security has informed California that the Russians tried to hack the state’s election systems last year, Secretary of State Alex Padilla reported Friday.
“Today, my office was informed for the first time by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that Russian cyber actors scanned California’s Internet-facing systems in 2016,” Padilla said.
“DHS confirmed that they have no evidence that any systems were penetrated or compromised in any way,” he added. “Scanning is an unauthorized attempt to identify weaknesses in a computer or network — akin to a burglar looking for unlocked doors in a house.”
Padilla said California monitors such activity as part of its routine cyber security process and had not detected a break in.
He criticized the federal government for taking over a year to report the hack attempts, saying “withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.”
Homeland Security notified 21 states Friday that Russia attempted to hack their election systems before the 2016 election.
