Hackers target US campaign finance system days before midterm elections

Hackers have reportedly targeted the US Federal Election Commission’s (FEC) website, disrupting campaign financing disclosures just days before the midterm elections. An FEC email sent to a campaign compliance firm reportedly read, “We have a bad actor trying to breach FEC systems. As a result, we’ve had to temporarily suspend our web-facing services,” according to Reuters news agency. The outage prevents organisations from filing the FEC’s 24 and 48-hour spending reports, which track how political groups and candidates are spending on specific races. A status message on the FEC website showed the system was down after 10.15pm EST on Monday (2.15am GMT on Tuesday). An update was posted on Tuesday at 8.