The Administrative Office of the US Courts (AOUSC) says a cyberattack on government contractor BAE Systems has crippled the notice system used by federal bankruptcy courts.
In a news release Thursday, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said the BAE Systems cyberattack also halted the creation and distribution of bankruptcy notices.
“The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts is in contact with the affected courts and is also coordinating with BAE Systems. BAE is actively investigating this incident and working to restore operations.” AOUSC said.
“Due to the incident, all access to the BNC systems and websites that BAE operates on behalf of Justice and the associated bankruptcy notification process is currently unavailable, including bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov, Notices.uscourts.gov and the National Creditor Registration Service.”
BAE Systems is Europe’s largest defense company, developing and manufacturing military technology for the UK and US defense ministries and a major provider of enterprise IT, cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity services to military, intelligence agencies and civilian government agencies worldwide.
“We are aware of a security incident unique to the BNC system and have taken immediate action to resolve it. We are coordinating closely with AOUSC regarding the response,” a BAE Systems spokesperson told BleepingComputer.
An AOUSC spokesperson could not immediately be reached for comment when contacted by BleepingComputer today for further details on the attack.
The Federal Judiciary, the independent judicial arm of the federal government, also announced last year that it was strengthening cybersecurity defenses after a cyberattack impacted its electronic case management systems.
The federal judiciary added that while most documents in the system are public, it now protects certain sealed files containing sensitive information with stricter access controls to ward off attackers.
“The federal judiciary is taking additional steps to strengthen the protection of sensitive case documents in response to recent escalated cyberattacks of a complex and sustained nature on its case management system,” it said.
Although the agency could not confirm a breach of confidential documents, says a Politico report At that time, hackers had breached CM/ECF’s electronic case management systems and the federal court records management platform PACER and gained access to sensitive data (including the identities of confidential informants).
Update October 16, 9:28 am EDT: Added BAE Systems statement.
