Pennsylvania’s State Courts Restore Website Services Disrupted by Cyber Attack

The Pennsylvania state court system has restored all of its digital platforms that were disrupted by a February 4 cyber attack.

In an update, Chief Justice Debra Todd reported that the system’s news, statistics, court opinions and the civics educational toolkit sections of its website are now back online. That is in addition to all other e-services and e-commerce options, including those used to file documents with appellate courts and guardianship reports, as well as to view dockets and court summaries on the web, which were restored last week.

According to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the disruption was caused by a denial of service cyber attack when malicious actors flooded the network with traffic and prevented access for legitimate users.

According to officials, the attack never compromised any data and did not keep the courts from operating on their normal schedule.

A court system spokesperson told The Associated Press that court officials never received a ransom demand or had any communication with the attackers. The attackers have not been identified.

“While we are beyond the initial attack, our team remains ever vigilant in our attempts to identify and disarm the threat of continued and future cyber attacks and continues to fully participate in law enforcement’s ongoing investigation,” Todd said.

In addition to local officials and CISA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of Homeland Security are involved in the investigation.

Meanwhile, officials in Bucks County have been able to restore the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) emergency communication system that was temporarily inoperable due to a cyberattack on January 21. The county has also restored its connectivity to state and federal databases containing criminal justice information.

The county said it never negotiated with the hackers and never paid any ransom to restore the systems. Instead, the county said it relied on its own information technology and emergency communications departments and some forensic and legal experts.

County officials have indicated that the ransomware group Akira is likely to have been responsible for the attack.

As with the court system, the county said it has found no evidence that any data was copied or otherwise extracted from the CAD system.

Topics Cyber Pennsylvania