Russia, suspected of being behind a sophisticated cyber attack on the computer system of the US federal courts / which discreetly transmitted to all chief judges

American investigators have discovered evidence that Russia is at least partially responsible for the recent cyber attack on the computer system that manages the US Federal Court documents, The New York Times wrote on Tuesday, citing more people informed about this attack.

Among the documents of the federal courts that were targeted by the appeal are extremely delicate files, which could contain information that can disclose sources and persons accused of crimes against national security, according to the sources of the American publication.

It is not clear what is the responsible entity, if behind the attack there is a branch of Russian secret services or if other countries have been involved, a fact described by some people familiar with the problem as an effort to infiltrate the system for years. Some of the searches have targeted medium-level criminal files in the New York area and other jurisdictions, some of them involving people with Russian and Eastern European names.

The disclosure comes in the context in which US President Donald Trump is to meet in Alaska on Friday with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, where the White House leader intends to discuss his efforts to end the Ukraine.

“Urgent issue that requires immediate measures”

The administrators of the judicial system recently informed the officials of the Department of Justice, clerks and chief judges of the federal courts that “insistent and sophisticated cyber actors have recently compromised sealant files”, according to an internal note of the Department, analyzed by NYT. The administrators also advised these officials to quickly eliminate the most sensitive documents from the system.

“This remains an urgent issue that requires immediate measures,” the officials wrote, referring to the guide issued by the Department of Justice at the beginning of 2021, after the system was infiltrated for the first time.

Initially, it was believed that documents related to criminal activities with connections abroad, from at least eight district courts were targeted. Last month, the chief judges of the district courts from all over the country were discreetly warned to remove this type of files from the usual document management system, according to informed officials on this request. Initially, they were told not to discuss this issue with other judges in their districts.

In recent weeks, judges in the East District of New York have taken corrective measures. On Friday, the chief judge of the District, Margo K. Brodie, issued an order that prohibits the loading of sealed documents in peace, the public database in which documents and judicial files can be searched. Typically, sealed documents would be loaded into the database, but behind a cyber protection meant to prevent, in theory, people without authorization to see them. Now, these sensitive documents will be loaded on a separate storage device, outside the peace.

Peter Kaplan, the spokesman of the US Administrative Office, who helps to administer the system, refused to comment. A spokesman for the US Department of Justice did not respond immediately to a request to send a point of view.

Federal officials strive to establish the patterns of the attack, to evaluate the damage and to remedy the defects of an extended and intensely used computer system, known for a long time for its serious vulnerabilities that could be exploited by foreign opponents.

Last week, the administrators of the American judicial system publicly announced that they are taking additional measures to protect the network, which includes the electronic cases / file management system, a system used to charge the documents and for the peace.

They did not approach the origin of the attack or what files were compromised. The breach also affected the federal courts in South Dakota, Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota and Arkansas, said an official who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

“Sensitive documents can be targets of interest for a number of actors who represent a threat,” wrote the authors of last week's ad. “In order to better protect them, the courts have implemented more rigorous procedures, to restrict access to sensitive documents under carefully controlled and monitored conditions.”

The Politico publication has previously reported that the system was attacked since the beginning of July by an unknown foreign actor.

A similar attack, 4 years ago

Concerns about the piration of the electronic archive system of American courts are older than this summer. The courts announced in January 2021 that a cyber attack took place, but did not call Russia.

Former federal officials in the field of law enforcement have stated that Russia is behind that cyber attack. It was not clear if other countries exploited the vulnerabilities of the system, but the former officials described the security breach as extremely serious.

Following the 2021 announcement, federal investigators were trained to take significant precautionary measures to alleviate the effects of intrusion. This meant the manual delivery to the courts of the search warrants containing potential information about sources and manual submission of complaints or sensitive accusation acts – at least in some districts, especially in the southern district of New York, where prosecutors were encouraged to submit paper documents.

Former officials of the Department of Justice said that their efforts to maintain the secret of the documents, although they represented an improvement, did not completely mitigate the risk, given the extent of the system and the complexity of the cases.

According to two court officials, they had already begun to take defensive measures in the spring of last year. Judges have forbidden access to internal documents for registration of documents during travel abroad and sometimes they have been given disposable phones and new email addresses to communicate with their own cameras and clerks. In May, the US Administrative Office announced that it will establish the authentication based on several levels of protection in order to achieve access to the system.

In 2022, Democratic MP Jerrold Nadler, a member of the lower case in the US Congress representing New York, said that he obtained information that the computer system computer network was compromised by three anonymous foreign entities since the beginning of 2020.

Matthew Olsen, at that time director of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice, later said that he was working with judicial officials to solve cyber security issues, but minimized the effect on the files investigated by his unit.