Tennessee man to plead guilty to hacking Supreme Court’s electronic case filing system
A Tennessee man is expected to plead guilty on Friday to a misdemeanor charge for hacking into the Supreme Court’s electronic case filing system, according to court documents.
Nicholas Moore of Springfield "intentionally accessed a computer without authorization” on 25 different days when breaking into the filing system between August and October 2023, court documents allege.
Details on what information Moore accessed were not released. A spokesperson for the federal court in the District of Columbia and a lawyer for Moore did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the case.
Moore, 24, will appear in court via a video feed on Friday.
Seamus Hughes of CourtWatch first reported the charges against Moore. TechCrunch first reported the expected guilty plea.
The federal judicial system has been plagued by hacks of electronic filing systems in recent years. In August, the Administrative Office of the United States Courts announced it had strengthened protections for sensitive case documents “in response to recent escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature on its case management system.”
The Justice Department began requiring court documents in sensitive cases to be filed on paper in January 2021 to protect against hacks of electronic filing systems.
In August 2025, the New York Times reported that investigators had found evidence that Russian hackers had breached the federal court document electronic filing system known as PACER.
Suzanne Smalley
is a reporter covering digital privacy, surveillance technologies and cybersecurity policy for The Record. She was previously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop. Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police Department for the Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in Washington with her husband and three children.