(CNN) Update: The Democratic National Committee said late Wednesday that what it had earlier feared was the beginning of a sophisticated attempt to hack into its voter database, was, in fact, an unauthorized "simulated phishing test." Read the updated story here. 
 
 The Democratic National Committee contacted the FBI on Tuesday after it detected what it believes was the beginning of a sophisticated attempt to hack into its voter database, a Democratic source tells CNN. 
 
 The DNC was alerted in the early hours of Tuesday morning by a cloud service provider and a security research firm that a fake login page had been created in an attempt to gather usernames and passwords that would allow access to the party's database, the source said. 
 
 The DNC and the two companies involved in detecting the operation say they believe they thwarted a potential attack. 
 
 The fraudulent page was designed to look like the access page Democratic Party officials and campaigns across the country use to log into a service called Votebuilder, which hosts the database, the source said, adding the DNC believed it was designed to trick people into handing over their login details. 
 
 Read More ||||| What the Democratic National Committee this week thought was an attempted hack of its valuable voter file turned out to be a security test organized by a state party, unbeknown to the national organization. 
 
 The committee on Tuesday alerted the FBI to a fake online portal it thought had been set up as an elaborate attempt to trick DNC staff into giving up their log-in credentials — through a hacking technique known as “phishing” — as a way to gain access to the party’s VoteBuilder database. 
 
 [DNC says hackers unsuccessfully targeted voter database] 
 
 Late Wednesday night, DNC Chief Security Officer Bob Lord reversed course. “We, along with the partners who reported the [fake] site, now believe it was built by a third party as part of a simulated phishing test on VoteBuilder,” he said in a statement. 
 
 The false alarm raised fears that the DNC was being targeted again by a malicious foreign government, as it came two years after Russian spies hacked its computers and released thousands of emails online, throwing the party into disarray in the midst of a presidential election. 
 
 Election security is a hot topic, and the Trump administration is facing criticism that it has not done enough to safeguard the November midterm vote. 
 
 The mix-up resulted from a state Democratic organization seeking to test employees’ ability to avoid falling prey to phishing attempts. 
 
 The test was conducted at the behest of the Michigan Democratic Party, using “white-hat” security personnel with the group DigiDems, who provided their services to create the mock site, a Democratic official said. The state party did not notify the national committee or NGP, the firm that hosts the voter database, the official said. 
 
 “The test, which mimicked several attributes of actual attacks on the Democratic Party’s voter file, was not authorized by the DNC, VoteBuilder nor any of our vendors,” Lord said. 
 
 The mock site was discovered by a San Francisco-based security firm, Lookout, which has built a system that scours the Internet for such sites. Lookout contacted DigitalOcean, the firm that hosted the fake site. NGP also was informed. Shortly after midnight Tuesday, Lookout alerted Lord. 
 
 After some investigation, all concurred that the site appeared to be a system set up for malicious purposes, a party official said. It did not exhibit features of a phishing test system, the official said. Phishing tests usually have a page that informs users they should not have clicked on a link and an online tutorial on recognizing phishing scams, the official said. 
 
 Michigan party officials told the DNC on Wednesday afternoon that they had ordered the test. They were “a little embarrassed, but they did the right thing and told us right away,” said a DNC official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the matter remains sensitive. “They didn’t let it linger.” 
 
 Lord said he’s not seeking to punish anyone. “I’m not interested in slowing down people who want to do legitimate and appropriate testing,” he said in an interview. But the national party is likely to issue guidance, he said, “which is if you’re building any sort of attack framework, white-hat testing, we need to be aware of that so we can factor that into our decision-making.”
– The FBI is reportedly investigating a sophisticated—but unsuccessful—attempt to hack into the Democratic National Committee's voter database. The DNC learned of the attempt on Tuesday, CNN reports. The attack, which was detected by a cloud service provider and a security research company, involved a fake login page intended to gather usernames and passwords for a service called Votebuilder, which hosts the DNC's voter database. It's a method called "spearphishing," according to the New York Times. "It was very convincing," Mike Murray of the cybersecurity firm Lookout tells CNN, adding that it would be tough to tell the real page from the fake one, even if they were side-by-side. The fake login page was ultimately removed by the cloud hosting company DigitalOcean. The company's chief security officer says the threat was identified before the attack was launched. "We see no evidence that any sensitive data was stolen," he says. A DNC official tells the Times that it is not clear who the hackers were in this case. But, the paper recalls, a 2016 hack of the DNC was ultimately traced to Russia. This latest attempt, DNC Chief Security Officer Bob Lord tells the Times, "is further proof that there are constant threats as we head into midterm elections and we must remain vigilant in order to prevent future attacks." Earlier this week, Microsoft reported that it had uncovered new Russian hacking attempts targeting conservative organizations in the US.