BAE Systems breach knocks federal bankruptcy court notice systems offline

Federal courts announced Thursday that a cyberattack targeting BAE Systems has rendered inoperable the notice distribution system relied upon by bankruptcy courts across the United States.

According to the Administrative Office of the US Courts, the incident has disrupted both the generation and delivery of bankruptcy notices. The statement noted that "The Administrative Office of the US Courts has been in communication with the impacted courts and is also coordinating with BAE Systems. BAE is actively investigating this incident and working to restore operations."

The outage has affected multiple systems operated by BAE on behalf of the judiciary. The agency specified that "all access to the BNC systems and websites that BAE operates on behalf of the Judiciary and the related bankruptcy noticing process are unavailable at this time, including bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov, notices.uscourts.gov, and the National Creditor Registration Service."

BAE Systems, Europe's largest defense contractor, provides extensive services beyond weapons manufacturing. The company supplies enterprise IT infrastructure, cloud services, and cybersecurity solutions to military, intelligence, and civilian government agencies in both the UK and US.

Neither BAE Systems nor US Courts officials provided immediate responses when contacted for additional details regarding the attack.

This incident follows a pattern of elevated threats to judicial infrastructure. Last year, the US Federal Judiciary disclosed that it had experienced a cyberattack affecting its electronic case management systems and subsequently implemented enhanced security measures.

In response to those earlier attacks, the judiciary implemented stricter access controls for sealed filings containing sensitive material, even as most court documents remain publicly accessible. The agency stated that "The federal Judiciary is taking additional steps to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents in response to recent escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature on its case management system."

While the judiciary stopped short of formally confirming a breach of confidential materials in the prior incident, reporting indicated that attackers had successfully compromised both the CM/ECF electronic case management platform and the PACER document management system, obtaining access to sensitive information including the identities of confidential informants.