US federal courts reportedly vulnerable to another data breach

According to a Politico report citing testimony from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, in early 2020 the federal courts' document system was affected by "shocking breadth and scope" of violations. The Department of Justice (DOJ) reportedly informed the judiciary about the violations in March and told lawmakers that an investigation was ongoing. Other lawmakers, such as Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), expressed concern that the DOJ was hiding information about the breach and refusing to explain it to the public and Congress.

Nadler reportedly said the "system security failure" was the work of "three hostile foreign actors", however, Reuters security officials for the DOJ did not specify which countries might be involved.

In early 2021, the federal judiciary system announced it would be low-tech for its most sensitive documents, saying it would hand-distribute them instead of going through publicly available case management and electronic case file systems. Will do What will happen. At the time, it cited the SolarWinds attack, which gave hackers access to the systems of dozens of businesses and government agencies, as the reason for the policy change. Although the SolarWinds attack is also believed to have started in early 2020, the breach revealed by Nadler is reportedly an isolated incident.

At the moment, details are not publicly available about who the attackers had access to or how they entered the system of the judiciary. It is also unclear when DOJ officials discovered the attack. The Justice Department's National Security Division did not immediately respond to The Verge's request for comment about the hack and subsequent investigation.