Cyber intrusion prompts Washington court systems outage

Ongoing outages at Washington state court systems have been confirmed by the state Administrative Office of the Courts officials following a cyberattack over the weekend, BleepingComputer reports.

Immediate action to take down state courts' websites, judicial information systems, and related services has been taken to avert further compromise, according to AOC Associate Director Wendy Ferrell, who noted restoration efforts to be underway. Such an intrusion has resulted in limited operations in municipal and district courts in Thurston County, Bainbridge Island, Puyallup, Monroe, and Milton, but has not affected online access in the Pierre County Superior Court Clerk's Office, which has noted ongoing service modifications as it seeks to recover impacted services. Such a development comes more than a year after a cyberattack against the Kansas Judicial Branch, which resulted in the exfiltration of sensitive files, as well as the disruption of several state court information, case management, and electronic payments systems.