The Federal Election Commission restored its electronic filing system on Wednesday night following a nearly 41-hour precautionary shutdown prompted by an attempted cyberattack. The outage prevented super PACs and other outside organizations from lodging time-sensitive 24- and 48-hour expenditure reports. Watchdogs warned that the disruption shielded massive eleventh-hour political spending from timely voter scrutiny during peak campaigning. Campaign finance managers were subsequently required to reset their account passwords before logging back into the restored portal.
Key points
The technological shutdown concealed high-volume political contributions from the public…: The technological shutdown concealed high-volume political contributions from the public during the election cycle's fastest spending window.
Agency officials confirmed that the incident did not impact voting operations because the…: Agency officials confirmed that the incident did not impact voting operations because the commission does not administer elections.
Federal investigators including the FBI and CISA have not released information regarding…: Federal investigators including the FBI and CISA have not released information regarding the identity or motives of the intruder.
Sources checked by our analysis pipeline: 1
NEW YORK, Oct 28 : The Federal Election Commission restored its electronic filing system Wednesday night after taking it offline for nearly 41 hours to contain a cyberattack, which temporarily concealed spending from big donors as political donations ramp up in the final days of the midterms.
Campaign watchdogs sounded alarms as the outage dragged into its third evening. Super PACs and other groups could not file mandatory 24- and 48-hour reports that show how much money they are spending to help or hurt candidates at the polls, shrouding the most recent political spending 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."
"It's pretty devastating this close to the election," she added.
The outage came at a critical time as daily spending accelerates to its fastest pace in the two-year election cycle, campaign finance experts said. Super PACs, which can accept…
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