US Federal Election Commission Restores Electronic Filing System After Cyberattack Outage

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) restored its electronic filing system Wednesday night after keeping it offline for nearly 41 hours to contain a cyberattack. The disruption temporarily concealed spending from big donors as political donations accelerated in the final days of the midterm elections.

Campaign watchdogs raised concerns as the outage extended into its third evening. Super PACs and other groups were unable to file mandatory 24- and 48-hour reports detailing money spent to support or oppose candidates, leaving recent political spending hidden from public view.

“We didn’t have access to the last-minute spending, which is really ramped up as the election draws nearer,” said campaign finance watchdog Molly White, who tracks crypto and Big Tech political spending. “We have no visibility into that when the filing systems are down.” She added that the situation was devastating so close to the election.

The outage occurred during a period when daily spending reached its fastest pace in the two-year election cycle. OpenSecrets research director Brendan Glavin noted that Super PACs—which can accept and give unlimited funds—and dark money groups averaged over $50 million per day during the week prior to the outage, with more than $250 million reported on October 20 alone.

The FEC informed users that most affected services had been restored, posting a notice shortly after 10 p.m. ET on Monday regarding a problem that caused major outages across electronic campaign filing systems. Reuters could not establish the motive behind the hacking effort, though government networks are regularly targeted for espionage, financial gain, or political motives. The FEC does not administer US elections, and the outage did not affect voters' ability to cast ballots.

Hilary Braseth, executive director of OpenSecrets, stated prior to the system's restoration that “disclosure delayed is disclosure denied.” She emphasized that transparency is a fundamental public safeguard when hundreds of millions of dollars in outside money flood political airwaves before an election.

The FEC did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday and did not release details regarding the cause of the outage. Both the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI referred questions to the FEC. An FEC officer informed campaign compliance firms late Monday that the agency took services offline following an attempted breach by a "bad actor," according to an email reviewed by Reuters. Campaign finance managers were required to reset passwords before logging back into the system.

The timing of the incident and the lack of official information generated speculation within the industry. Kyle Sandy, cybersecurity director at Logically, stated that taking the system offline was the appropriate response to an unverified threat. He noted that choosing a known outage over an unknown risk allowed the agency time to ensure no data was altered before restoring the platform.

"This incident highlights the critical importance of robust cybersecurity infrastructure in administrative and regulatory systems. When core digital platforms experience downtime, transparency and operational continuity are immediately compromised. For organizations across sectors, proactive threat detection and clearly defined incident response protocols are essential to protect sensitive data and maintain public trust during high-stakes periods." — Dr. Shishir Gupta, Founder & CEO, StartupLanes