Update, Oct. 29: The FEC restored its electronic filing system Wednesday night after nearly 41 hours offline, Reuters reported. Filers had to reset their passwords before logging back in, according to an email Reuters reviewed. The agency has not said what caused the incident or whether any data was accessed, and Reuters could not identify the attackers or a motive.
The Federal Election Commission shut down its electronic campaign-finance filing system after someone tried to break into the agency's systems, Reuters reported, one week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. For campaigns, donors and the public, the outage cuts off the near-real-time view of political spending at the point in the race when that spending is heaviest.
What Happened
According to an FEC email Reuters saw, an electronic filings officer told several campaign compliance firms Monday night that the agency had "a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems" and had temporarily shut down its web-facing services. An FEC status message said filing had been down since Monday night.
The FEC said its IT staff were working to restore service and declined further comment. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency referred questions to the FEC, and the FBI did not immediately respond, Reuters reported. Early Wednesday, a banner on the FEC website still said the electronic filing system was offline.
Politico reported, citing a person familiar with the matter, that FEC security staff spotted the attempted intrusions early and shut down only the targeted parts of the system, describing the attempt as "quite narrow and compartmentalized." The same person said no one knows who is responsible and speculated that advanced artificial intelligence models with hacking capabilities may have been used. Politico reported no evidence for that theory, and the FEC has not said whether any data was accessed.
Why It Matters
The FEC collects campaign-finance disclosures from candidates, parties and political action committees. It does not run elections or count ballots; the outage should not affect voting or past reports, which remain searchable, Reuters noted.
What the outage blocks is the filing of 24-hour and 48-hour reports on independent expenditures, which is spending by outside groups for or against candidates in specific races. Those reports are the main public window on money spent in an election's closing days. Steven Mele, chief executive of compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, told Reuters he had not seen anything like it in 26 years.
Political ad tracker AdImpact counts about $11.21 billion in ads spent or reserved this cycle, and OpenSecrets says super PACs and dark money groups averaged more than $50 million a day in spending over the past week, according to Reuters.
For agency heads and boards, the episode shows the cost of containment: shutting public-facing systems may be the right security call, but it also stops a legally required service at the worst moment. The FEC faces that test without a quorum of commissioners, Politico noted, after departures and President Donald Trump's move to fire then-Chair Ellen Weintraub, a Democrat.
Context
Federal agencies have warned that AI is sharpening attacks on the election ecosystem. The Primary Wire reported Oct. 16 that the FBI and CISA had warned election and campaign officials about AI-polished phishing, a day after a separate FBI alert on scammers using AI to impersonate candidates.
What to Watch
Now that filing has resumed, watch whether a backlog of late reports follows, whether the FEC says if any data was accessed, and whether the FBI or CISA open an investigation or attribute the activity. An automated FEC email cited by Politico said campaigns will not be fined for reports filed within 24 hours of the system's return.
