Data Breach of Federal Court System Causes Justice Department to Investigate
The Justice Department is investigating a data breach of the U.S. federal courts system dating to early 2020, a top official testified on Capitol Hill Thursday.
Scary scenario for the judicial branch: House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) told fellow lawmakers that “three hostile foreign actors” attacked the U.S. Courts’ document filing system as part of a breach in early 2020 causing a “system security failure.” The comments — at a committee hearing on oversight of the Justice Department’s National Security Division — were the first public disclosure of the hack.
Nadler said the committee learned in March about the “startling breadth and scope” of the breach, which was separate from the SolarWinds hack revealed in late 2020. SolarWinds involved Russian government-backed hackers infiltrating the networks of over a dozen U.S. federal agencies for much of 2020, including the federal courts systems.
