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Hackers target FEC website, Commission says electronic filing system offline

The FEC said its electronic filing system is offline after a reported hacking attempt and IT staff are working to restore service.

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https://breach-signal.com/cybercrime/fec-filing-system-offline-hacking-attempt/

Hooded hacker in a black mask working on a laptop, stylized digital illustration.
A stylized illustration of a masked hacker represents the anonymous threat actors targeting digital infrastructure. Photo by Redivy on Wikimedia Commons

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Hackers targeted the U.S. Federal Election Commission’s website on Oct. 27, 2026, and the commission confirmed its electronic filing system is offline while IT staff work to restore service. Cite list: Gizmodo, Shacknews

The FEC status page indicates the filing system first went down Monday night around 10:15 p.m. ET on Oct. 26, 2026. Visitors to the public portal see a 504 Gateway Time-out page. A 504 Gateway Time-out is an error message showing that a server acting as a gateway did not receive a timely response from an upstream server. The agency has not named a source of the attacks and took the site offline while working to resolve the matter.

Cite list: Gizmodo, Shacknews

FEC spokesperson Myles Martin said by email that IT staff are actively working to restore service and it is unclear when service may be restored. “our IT staff are actively working to restore service,” Martin said. Cite list: Gizmodo

The FEC confirms a hacking attempt against its website just days before the Nov. 3, 2026 midterms but has not named a source for the attacks. Cite list: Gizmodo, Shacknews

The outage may delay the filing of reports by political groups required to disclose donors. Voters will likely have less information about super PAC spending in the final days before the Nov. 3, 2026 midterms. Cite list: Gizmodo

Shacknews reports the hacking attempt comes just days before the U.S. midterm elections, and that the site is not used to cast ballots, so outages are not expected to affect voting. They could disrupt analysis of political campaign ad spending data. Gizmodo reports the Federal Election Commission does not administer elections, which are run by the states, so vote tallies are not expected to be altered ahead of the midterms. Cite list: Shacknews, Gizmodo

Ad spending in the 2026 midterms totals about $11.21 billion, the most in U.S. history and above the $11.2 billion spent in 2024. Cite list: Gizmodo

The incident follows PHP security issues that left thousands of websites vulnerable, but the FEC has not cited PHP as a cause for the outage. “At this time, the FEC’s electronic filing system is currently offline and our IT staff are actively working to restore service,” the commission said via Reuters. Cite list: Shacknews

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