FEC Restores Filing System After 41-Hour Cyberattack Outage

The Federal Election Commission brought its electronic filing system back online Wednesday night after taking it offline for nearly 41 hours to contain a cyberattack.

The agency posted a notice just after 10 p.m. Eastern Time on Monday, stating it was investigating a problem that caused major outages across its systems. Those systems process electronic campaign filings. The agency did not return requests for comment Wednesday and did not announce details on the cause of the outage.

An FEC officer told campaign compliance firms late Monday that the agency took its services offline after a bad actor tried to breach its systems, according to an email reviewed by Reuters. Campaign finance managers were required to reset their passwords before logging back into the system, the email stated.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI both referred questions to the FEC. Reuters could not establish the motive for the hacking effort.

The timing of the outage coincided with the final days of the midterm election cycle. Super PACs and other groups could not file mandatory 24-hour and 48-hour reports. These reports show how much money they are spending to help or hurt candidates.

OpenSecrets research director Brendan Glavin said Super PACs and dark money groups spent an average of over $50 million per day the week before the outage. More than $250 million in spending was reported on October 20 alone.

Molly White, a campaign finance watchdog who tracks crypto and Big Tech political spending, said the lack of access to last-minute spending was a problem as donations ramped up. She stated, “We have no visibility into that when the filing systems are down.” White added that it was pretty devastating this close to the election.

Hilary Braseth, executive director of nonpartisan campaign finance watchdog OpenSecrets, said in a statement released before the system was restored, “Disclosure delayed is disclosure denied.” She argued that when hundreds of millions of dollars in outside money flood political airwaves, transparency is a fundamental public safeguard.

The FEC does not administer US elections, and the outage did not affect voters’ ability to cast ballots. Kyle Sandy, cybersecurity director at IT security firm Logically, said taking the system offline is the right call when dealing with an attack. He noted it tells observers the FEC detected something it could not immediately scope and chose a known outage over an unknown risk.

White noted that the timing and lack of information from the FEC stirred up conspiracy theories throughout the industry. She said it would be a good way for unscrupulous actors to hide unpopular last-minute spending, though she acknowledged it is hard to say with real information that is what happened.