US Federal Election Commission Takes Filings System Offline After Reported Hacking Attempt

In brief

• The Federal Election Commission took its electronic filing system offline after a reported hacking attempt.
• The outage began Monday evening and blocks political groups from filing donor disclosures.
• The FEC does not administer elections, so vote counting is not expected to be affected ahead of the November 3 midterms.

Filing system shut down

The Federal Election Commission has disconnected its electronic filing system following what it described as an attempt to breach its defenses (Hakerzy uderzają przed wyborami w USA. Komisja Wyborcza odcina serwery – Wirtualna Polska). According to Reuters, unidentified attackers tried to gain access to the agency's resources, prompting administrators to cut off key infrastructure as a precaution (Haker uderzył w finanse wyborcze w USA. Kluczowe systemy FEC musiały zostać odłączone – Bankier.pl) (Hackerangriff: Meldesystem von US-Wahlbehörde FEC nach Hackerangriff offline – ZEIT ONLINE).

Outage and impact on disclosures

An official notice on the agency's website confirms that the electronic system for archiving and registering documents is offline, and IT specialists are working to restore it. The system first went down on Monday evening, around 10:15 p.m. Eastern time, according to the commission's status page (Federal Election Commission Takes Down Filings Website After Reported Hacking Attempt – Forbes) (Hackers Target U.S. Federal Election Commission Website – Gizmodo). Political committees that must publish their donors may be unable to file reports on time.

Election administration not affected

The commission does not run elections; that task belongs to individual states. Officials and reporters note that the disruption is unlikely to affect vote counting or voting itself. The main consequence is reduced public visibility into spending by super PACs in the final days before the November 3 midterms.