Wisconsin court system affected by DDoS incident

Wisconsin’s state court system was hit with a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack this week, affecting their computer network.

Director of State Courts Randy Koschnick said “counter measures” were taken to limit the damage of the DDoS attack that targeted the system.

But some of the network users, including the general public, “may have temporarily experienced intermittent service or slower than usual response times to some online services early this week.”

“The cyberattack temporarily slowed networks but did not result in the breach of any court data, and court operations continue as usual across the state,” said Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler.

“The integrity of the court record is of paramount importance, and I want to recognize CCAP (Consolidated Court Automation Programs), our state agencies and law enforcement for addressing this situation quickly and effectively.”

Court officials said any attorneys or litigants who had issues filing documents through the digital system can contact the circuit court clerk or the county court for more information on how to move forward.

A spokesperson for the court did not respond to requests for comment about who may be behind the attack or whether federal law agencies are involved in the investigation.

This is the latest of several attacks on the U.S. court system in recent years.

Last month, Florida's Supreme Court was affected by the ESXiArgs ransomware, which exploited a two-year-old vulnerability affecting VMWare EXSi servers.

In December, the LockBit ransomware group attacked the municipal court system in Mount Vernon, Ohio before going after another municipal court in Circleville, Ohio. A 2021 ransomware attack on the Illinois Office of the Attorney General leaked troves of court documents.

Last year it was revealed that the Justice Department was investigating a breach of the federal courts docketing system that occurred in early 2020.

In 2021, it was revealed that the federal judiciary’s electronic filing system, which holds some of the most sensitive documents held by the government, had been breached by Russian hackers during the SolarWinds incident.

The Associated Press reported that officials believe the Russian hackers were able to access thousands of documents related to whistleblowers, warrants, trade secrets and espionage.