3 days ago
Federal court filing system hit in sweeping hack
Staff for Conrad, a district judge in the Western District of North Carolina, declined to comment.
The hack is the latest sign that the federal court filing system is struggling to keep pace with a rising wave of cybersecurity threats.
Michael Scudder, who chairs the Committee on Information Technology for the federal courts' national policymaking body, told the House Judiciary Committee in June that CM/ECF and Pacer are 'outdated, unsustainable due to cyber risks, and require replacement.'
He also said that because the federal Judiciary holds such sensitive information, it faces 'unrelenting security threats of extraordinary gravity.'
As of July 2022, the Justice Department was investigating another hack of the federal court system that then-House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) described as 'startling.' The incident involved three foreign hacking groups and dated back to early 2020, Nadler also said. It is not clear who the foreign hackers were or whether these incidents are connected.
'It's the first time I've ever seen a hack at this level,' said the first of the two people, who has spent more than two decades on the federal judiciary.
The second person said that roughly a dozen court dockets were tampered with in one court district as a result of the hack. The first person was not aware of any tampering but said it was theoretically possible.
The incident does not appear to have exposed the most highly protected federal court witnesses, since the real identities of those thought to face exceptional risk for cooperating are held on separate systems maintained by the Justice Department, according to the first person.
During his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, Scudder said that replacing CM/ECF and PACER was a 'top priority' for the federal judiciary, but that developing a more modernized system would have to 'be developed and rolled out on an incremental basis.'
He also called CM/ECF and Pacer the 'backbone system federal courts depend on for mission-critical, day-to-day operation.'
