Reportedly, Chinese hackers crashed the Federal Election Commission’s website October the 1st which was the first day of the partial government shutdown in “what may be the worst act of sabotage in the FEC’s 38-year history,” a non-partisan investigative journalism group reported.
A senior reporter, David Levinthal, for the Center for Public Integrity said motivation was not yet clear but taking down a website of the U.S. federal government is a big deal to them. “These are not people who like the United States,” he added. “These are people who want to do damage to the country. They want to do damage to freedom and democracy as we have it in this country.”
Because of the partial government shutdown none of the FEC’s 339 employees was on the job the day of the hacking attack. The FEC declined comment on the subject and refered all inquiries to the Department of Homeland Security.
A DHS official said that it was investigating what happened at the FEC, adding, “While the investigation is ongoing and no final determination has been made at this point, there are no indications that any sensitive information or other personal data was compromised.”
According to CPI, and independent audit of the FEC earlier this year found its IT systems were vulnerable to a hacking attack, but the FEC insisted its computer systems were “secure.”