Hackers targeted 21 states during 2016 elections, US Govt reveals

For the first time in nearly a year, the US government has told 21 individual states that their systems were targeted by hackers before last year’s presidential election.

The notification came roughly a year after the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) first said states were targeted by hacking efforts possibly connected to Russia.

However, the delayed disclosure prompted criticism by some politicians who thumbed down the timing despite repeated requests for information.

“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,” California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat, said in a statement.

Read also: Trump finally accepts that Russia hacked US elections that produced him

“The practice of withholding critical information from elections officials is a detriment to the security of our elections and our democracy.”

In January, President-elect, Donald Trump revealed that he had accepted the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia engaged in cyberattacks aimed at disrupting the U.S. elections.

Trump had earlier remarked that Russia’s hacking had no effect on the US elections, instead he blamed Democratic Party for allowing Russian hackers to breach its computer systems adding that hacking by foreign powers did not affect the final outcome of the November polls.

 

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