{"id":17992,"date":"2026-10-28T14:46:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:46:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=17992"},"modified":"2026-10-28T14:47:29","modified_gmt":"2026-10-28T06:47:29","slug":"hackers-target-us-fec-system-disrupting-campaign-finance-disclosures-days-before-midterms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=17992","title":{"rendered":"Hackers target US FEC system, disrupting campaign finance disclosures days before midterms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The US Federal Election Commission’s website was targeted by a hacker or hackers, according to an email seen by Reuters, disrupting the agency’s electronic filings \u200bsystem a week before the November 3 elections.
The hack comes as so-called super PACs and dark money groups spend \u200crecord sums in the final days of the races. The elections will determine whether President Donald Trump’s Republicans maintain their majorities in Congress for the next two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In a statement, the FEC said, “At this time, the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service.” The FEC, \u200bwhich tracks the spending of candidates and political committees, said users could still search the website for past reports. A status message, opens new tab \u200bposted by the FEC said its filing system had been down since around 10 p.m. ET on Monday (0200 GMT \u2060Tuesday).
Around 8 p.m. ET on Tuesday (0000 GMT Wednesday), a new status message said the issue “has been identified and a fix is being implemented.” \u200bThe FEC did not immediately return a message seeking comment and a notice on its website said its filing system remained offline.
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The FEC does \u200bnot play a role in administering US elections and the outage should have no effect on voters’ ability to cast ballots.
The outage does prevent organizations from filing the FEC’s 24-hour and 48-hour spending reports, which show how much political groups and others are spending on specific races.
“I’ve never seen this in 26 years,” said Steven \u200bMele, president and CEO at political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group.
The FEC posted the notice to its website after campaign finance officers \u200bcould not file mandatory reports late on Monday.
“We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result, we\u2019ve had to temporarily shut down our \u200cweb \u2060facing services,” an FEC electronic filings officer said in the email to several campaign compliance firms that night.
The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI both referred questions to the FEC.
The midterms are now the most expensive US election in history with roughly $11.21 billion spent on advertising and future reservations so far, according to political ad tracker AdImpact. They have surpassed the previous record set in the 2024 elections when $11.2 billion was \u200bspent on all races, including $3.2 billion \u200bon the presidential race between \u2060Trump and former Vice President Kamala Harris, AdImpact said.
Much of the spending is being driven by super PACs, which can accept unlimited amounts of money from wealthy individuals and corporations, opens new tab and spend as much as they want \u200bon campaigns with few restrictions.
The sums being spent in recent weeks are staggering as Democrats gain ground \u200bin several Republican \u2060strongholds.
Super PACs and dark money groups have spent an average of over $50 million per day over the last week, said Brendan Glavin, research director at nonpartisan campaign watchdog group OpenSecrets. More than $250 million in spending was reported on October 20 alone, he added.

“It’s a big deal,” he said of the outage, \u2060which leaves \u200bvoters in the dark until the filing system is back online.
“These are the key \u200breports that tell us what is happening,” Glavin said. “In the last days of the election this is the only way for us to keep track of where the money’s being \u200bspent” and who’s spending it.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Federal Election Commission’s website was targeted by a hacker or hackers, according to an email seen by Reuters, disrupting the agency’s electronic filings \u200bsystem a week before the November 3 elections.The hack comes as so-called super PACs and dark money groups spend \u200crecord sums in the final days of the races. The elections […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":17993,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4450,1926,2103],"class_list":["post-17992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-fec","tag-said","tag-system"],"yoast_head":"\nHackers target US FEC system, disrupting campaign finance disclosures days before midterms - LISTEN WORLD<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/tingchao.xyz\/?p=17992\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Hackers target US FEC system, disrupting campaign finance disclosures days before midterms - LISTEN WORLD\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The US Federal Election Commission’s website was targeted by a hacker or hackers, according to an email seen by Reuters, disrupting the agency’s electronic filings \u200bsystem a week before the November 3 elections.The hack comes as so-called super PACs and dark money groups spend \u200crecord sums in the final days of the races. 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