FEC Filing System Offline After Reported Hacking Attempts

The Federal Election Commission’s electronic filing system was offline Tuesday after reported hacking attempts disrupted campaign-finance disclosures in the week before the November 3 midterm elections. The agency said its information-technology staff were working to restore service, while previously filed reports remained searchable on its website. The disruption prevented organizations and political committees from submitting mandatory 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, according to reporting based on an email describing the attempted breach and comments from a campaign-finance compliance consultant. The filings disclose spending by political groups in specific races. Their interruption reduced the information available about campaign spending until the system is restored. The FEC said it could not comment further on the outage. A status notice said the filing system had been down since about 10 p.m. Eastern time Monday, October 26. The agency did not provide a timeline for restoring it. The reported hacking attempt was described in an email reviewed by Reuters. The email said a hacker or hackers targeted the FEC website and disrupted its electronic filing services. The...