US federal court filing system breached in sweeping hack, Politico reports

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(Corrects to remove incorrect reference to Politico not saying whether anyone was suspected of being behind the hack)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. federal judiciary’s electronic case filing system has been compromised in a sweeping hack that is believed to have exposed sensitive court data in several states, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing two people with knowledge of the incident.

Politico said the incident had affected the judiciary’s federal case management system, which includes the Case Management/Electronic Case Files, or CM/ECF, which legal professionals use to upload and manage case documents; and Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER, which provides the public with pay-for access to some of the same data.

The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, didn’t immediately return messages seeking comment late Wednesday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation referred questions to the Justice Department, which did not immediately reply to an email.

The case management system – which carries sensitive information such as sealed indictments and arrest warrants – has long been a magnet for foreign spies.

In 2021 the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said it was adding new security procedures to protect confidential or sealed records following an apparent compromise of the system.

The following year, then-House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler said that “three hostile foreign actors” had targeted the courts’ document filing system and that there had been a breach of “startling breadth and scope.”

The federal judiciary has struggled to modernize its aging systems. Earlier this year, U.S. Circuit Judge Amy St. Eve told lawmakers that years of underinvestment had left the judiciary system’s IT systems vulnerable.

“Many of them are no longer up to date with modern development standards or security protocols, leaving them expensive to operate, difficult to maintain, and at regular risk of either operational failure or compromising security breaches,” she said.

(Reporting by Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru and Raphael Satter in Washington; Editing by Kim Coghill)