US Senate network outage
Several websites and email systems serving the U.S. Senate have been affected by a network outage for several hours starting Wednesday evening. The cause has reportedly been found and engineers and working on the issue. Getty Images

The U.S. senate is currently experiencing a network outage, affecting “email and mobility,” the Senate Sergeant At-Arms, Frank Larkin's office said Wednesday.

The outage had raised concerns that it could be the result of a cyberattack, after the hack against Sony Pictures, which was blamed on hackers backed by North Korea, and subsequent Internet outages in that country, which some speculated were a U.S. response to the hack.

Those concerns appeared to be allayed, however, as Larkin's office subsequently tweeted: “issue has been identified and engineers are now remediating.” No information as to the cause of the outage has yet been made public.

Senate staffers told CNN that their emails were down, and that they were having trouble accessing Senate websites. One said that email in his office had been down since just after 5 p.m.

Email systems and websites used by the U.S. House of Representatives and the White House were not affected by the outage, UPI reports.

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