Kansas Blames Court System Outage on “Sophisticated Foreign Cyberattack”

Private Data Compromised By Gordon HopkinsIt has now been more than five weeks since what Kansas officials are now describing as a “sophisticated foreign cyberattack” took down most of Kansas' court computer systems.On Tuesday, November 11, 2023, seven justices of the Kansas Supreme Court (Chief Justice Marla Luckert and Justices Eric Rosen, Dan Biles, Caleb Stegall, Evelyn Wilson, K.J. Wall, and Melissa Standridge) released a statement about the cyberattack, which was first discovered on October 12 of this year, “A few weeks ago, the Kansas judicial branch was a victim of a sophisticated foreign cyberattack that impacted the information systems used by the Kansas judicial branch. This attack has temporarily incapacitated Kansas Office of Judicial Administration information systems, affecting daily operations of the state’s appellate courts and district courts in 104 counties.“When we discovered the attack, we quickly disconnected our information systems from external access. We notified state authorities, and since that time have benefited from the continued support provided by the governor’s office, legislative leadership, and state and federal law enforcement. This attack—on one of our three branches of government—was made against all Kansans.”The announcement confirms what was heretofore only suspected, that the outage was the result of ransomware, a type of malware that employs encryption to hold computer information for ransom. Once in the system, critical data, applications and files are no longer accessible by the legitimate user. It is called ransomware because a ransom is then demanded by the perpetrators to release the infected systems.The justices acknowledged that personal data has been compromised, “While the impact on our information systems is temporary, the cybercriminals also stole data and threatened to post it to a dark web site if their demands were not met. We are working with cybersecurity experts to identify the data quickly and securely so we can conduct a comprehensive review to determine the full scope of what personal information the cybercriminals may have stolen. Based on our preliminary review, it appears the stolen information includes Office of Judicial Administration files, district court case records on appeal, and other data, some of which may be confidential under law. A full review of what may have been stolen is a high priority to us but it will take time. Once this review is complete, we will notify those affected. As we respond to this criminal attack, we will continue to update our incident response page.”The dark web is a subset of the deep web that is intentionally hidden, requiring a specific browser to access. Given its anonymous nature, the dark web is often used for illicit and illegal purposes, such as the sale of stolen information.Given the proximity of Jefferson and Gage Counties to Kansas, some locals with legal business in Kansas may find themselves impacted by the outage and may have had their personal data stolen.The justices noted that government computer systems have become a prime target for hackers, “Cyberattacks on government entities are rampant. According to the 2022 FBI IC3 Internet Crime report, government is the third most-targeted sector for such attacks. Cybercrime is a persistent and serious threat to our democratic institutions. With the help of cybersecurity experts, we are buttressing our systems to guard against future attacks. It will likely take several weeks to return safely to normal operations, including electronic filing, but we will do so,”The justices said in their statement. “This assault on the Kansas system of justice is evil and criminal. Today, we express our deep sorrow that Kansans will suffer at the hands of these cybercriminals.”Johnson County, the state’s most populous, operates its own computer systems has largely been spared the impacts of the outages. As for the rest of Kansas courts, they have been forced to operate using paper files.

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