A Hacking Attempt Knocked the FEC Offline for 41 Hours and Hid Super PAC Spending a Week Before the Midterms

A week before the November 3 midterms, someone tried to break into the Federal Election Commission. The agency's answer was to pull the plug on its web-facing filing system for nearly 41 hours, right as outside money was pouring into the final stretch of the campaign.

The FEC has nothing to do with ballots, voting machines or voter files, so voting was never at risk. But the outage blacked out the fast disclosure reports that let the public see who is spending big in the last days of an election.

"A bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems"

Late Monday, an FEC electronic filings officer emailed campaign compliance firms with a blunt warning: "We have a bad actor attempting to breach FEC systems. As a result, we've had to temporarily shut down our web facing services," according to the email seen by Reuters. The system went dark around 10 p.m. ET. Reports already on file stayed searchable.

Tuesday night the FEC said it had identified the issue and was rolling out a fix, but the system was still down early Wednesday. Later that day the agency said filing was "back online and available to filers," with work continuing on search and notifications. Campaign finance managers had to reset their passwords before logging back in.

The FEC has not said who was behind the attempt, whether anyone got in or whether any data was compromised. Reuters could not establish a motive. CISA and the FBI referred questions to the FEC.

The money nobody could see

In the final 20 days before an election, candidates must report certain contributions or loans of $1,000 or more within 48 hours, and outside groups must disclose certain spending within 24 hours. Those reports give voters a near real time view of the money. For almost two days, super PACs and other groups simply could not file them.

The stakes are enormous. Outside groups reported nearly $610 million in independent expenditures for October 20 through 26, about $87 million a day, according to a CNBC analysis. Elon Musk's America PAC alone reported nearly $6.8 million for communications sent out on October 20. AdImpact counted $11.21 billion spent or reserved on political ads as of Monday night, the most expensive US cycle on record. Those 24 hour filings are how the public spots late surges like that. Tech money is part of the picture too, as when OpenAI president Greg Brockman pulled his remaining $25M from a pro-AI super PAC.

"I've never seen this in 26 years," said Steven Mele, CEO of compliance firm MBA Consulting Group, warning there would be less disclosure until the system was fixed. OpenSecrets executive director Hilary Braseth was sharper: "Disclosure delayed is disclosure denied." When hundreds of millions in outside money flood the airwaves in the final days, she said, "transparency is not an optional luxury, it is a fundamental public safeguard."

Campaign finance watchdog Molly White noted that an outage like this would be a convenient way for unscrupulous actors to bury unpopular last minute spending. The timing, and the silence about what happened, stirred conspiracy theories across the industry.

An agency running on two commissioners

Democratic Commissioner Dara Lindenbaum tried to calm nerves on X, stressing that the FEC only handles campaign finance reports. "We play zero role in administering the election," she wrote. "We don't receive, maintain, or come close to dealing with voter files, voting machines or voting."

That reassurance comes from an agency barely able to act. The six member FEC has had just two commissioners since October 2025 and has lacked the four needed for official action since May 2025. Career staff keep the disclosures running, and for 41 hours this week, even that stopped.

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