Federal bankruptcy courts across the US have been unable to send notices through the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC) for a week. The outage followed a cybersecurity incident affecting the BAE Systems infrastructure that runs the center.
The BNC handles notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the country, and BAE runs it as a contractor for the judiciary. On Thursday, the Administrative Office of the US Courts said that, because of the incident, the center is no longer generating or sending notices.
“As a result of the incident, all access to the BNC systems and websites that BAE operates on behalf of the judiciary and the related bankruptcy noticing process are unavailable at this time,” the Administrative Office said.
One of the affected services is the National Creditor Registration Service. While it is offline, users of the courts’ electronic filing system can’t generate the creditor mailing lists they normally use to serve documents.
According to the US Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Texas, BAE first told the Administrative Office about the problem late on October 9. The disruption hit both BAE’s notice-processing systems and the BNC websites.
Several bankruptcy courts posted notices on October 13, calling it a service disruption or interruption. None of them mentioned a cybersecurity incident.
The Administrative Office said it is in contact with the affected courts and coordinating with BAE. The company is investigating the incident and working to restore the systems.
A BAE Systems spokesperson told SecurityWeek that the company is “aware of a security incident that is isolated to the BNC system.” The spokesperson said BAE responded right away and is working closely with the Administrative Office.
Neither the judiciary nor BAE has said what caused the incident, whether it was a cyberattack, or whether any data was compromised. SecurityWeek reached out to BAE with questions on these points, but the company’s statement did not address them.
Courts have warned that paper and electronic notices issued through the center since October 9 have not been delivered. Electronic filing notifications to registered attorneys, trustees and the US Trustee are still going out. Courts also continue to accept filings and open new cases.
The courts said there is no estimated date yet for when services will be restored.
*updated with statement from BAE to SecurityWeek
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