Hackers target FEC system, disrupting campaign finance disclosures

The U.S. Federal Election Commission's website has been targeted by a hacker or hackers, according to an email seen by Reuters, disrupting the agency's electronic filings system a week before the midterm elections.

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, which tracks the spending of candidates and political committees, said users could still search the website for past reports. It declined further comment on the outage.

The FEC does not play a role in administering U.S. elections, and the outage should have no effect on voters' ability to cast ballots.

The outage prevents 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 Mele, president and CEO at political finance compliance firm MBA Consulting Group. "The result is there will be less disclosure on the elections" until it's fixed.

A status message posted by the FEC said its filing system had been down since around 10 p.m. ET Monday. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency referred…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/health