The electronic report filing system of the United States Federal Election Commission (FEC), which campaigns use to disclose their financing, has been down since around 22:00 (Eastern time) on Monday 26 October, according to a status notice from the FEC itself cited by Reuters. The failure comes a week before the 3 November midterm elections.
According to an email sent to campaign compliance firms and seen by Reuters, the agency had to temporarily shut down its web services because a hacker is trying to penetrate its systems.
The FEC confirmed to Reuters that its electronic filing system "is offline" and that its IT staff are working to restore it, but declined to comment further. The cybersecurity agency CISA and the FBI did not immediately respond to Reuters.
It is not known who is behind the intrusion attempts, whether any succeeded or whether any data has been affected. The FEC has not given a timeframe for restoring the service.
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