Federal bankruptcy courts contractor says no data stolen during cyber intrusion

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and an IT contractor said systems underpinning the federal bankruptcy courts are back online after a cyberattack two weeks ago caused outages.

The system, called the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC), produces and transmits bankruptcy notices for all federal bankruptcy courts. The platform is maintained by British multinational BAE Systems, which said it has worked closely with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to restore the BNC. 

“No other systems were affected. No data was extracted. There was no breach of any PII,” a spokesperson for BAE Systems told Recorded Future News. 

No hackers ever took credit for the cyberattack, which was announced on October 22 and declared a “Bankruptcy Rules emergency” by federal court officials.

The emergency declaration allowed bankruptcy judges to extend deadlines and issue related orders that allowed them to operate around the BNC outage. The emergency declaration lasts 90 days through January 2027 unless it is ended by court officials.

“Although BNC has announced that services are beginning to resume, we anticipate that the emergency declaration will remain necessary throughout the restoration period,” the court said. “The declaration provides important flexibility to ensure that courts can address the effects of the outage and helps protect parties from potential prejudice resulting from delayed notice and related service disruptions.”

As a result of the attack, the BNC’s production and distribution of bankruptcy notices for bankruptcy courts was halted. All access to the websites BAE operates on behalf of the judiciary — including bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov, notices.uscourts.gov, and the National Creditor Registration Service — were offline. 

On Monday, federal court officials said the BNC will begin processing a backlog of data from courts dating back to October 7 and will start processing newly received court submissions.

“Paper notices will be handled separately and released in prioritized waves based on production capacity and mailing readiness,” the court said.

To address delays caused by the outages, all paper notices created between October 13 and Monday will carry a warning that notices were sent later than intended due to the cyberattack on the BNC. 

Those receiving paper letters are urged to contact their lawyers or check the website of the clerk’s office for the court on the notice for more information about any new deadlines. 

The attack on the BNC is one of several breaches of federal systems to occur in recent months. The Defense Department, FBI, ATF and Department of Transportation have all suffered breaches over the last three months. On Wednesday, hackers released stolen data on 41,000 employees of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). 

A DHS spokesperson said they are aware of the breach and are “actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively.”

“We take all security threats against our employees and officers seriously and will work to ensure all are properly protected,” they told Recorded Future News.