Security News > 2021 > February > US court system ditches electronic filing, goes paper-only for sensitive documents following SolarWinds hack

The US court system has banned the electronic submission of legal documents in sensitive cases out of concern that Russian hackers have compromised the filing system.

The decision follows concerns last month that as a result of the SolarWinds fiasco - in which suspected Kremlin spies gained access to the networks of multiple US government departments via backdoored IT tools - the court system itself may have been hacked, making Highly Sensitive Documents accessible.

Typically those documents are filed through the court system's electronic filing system but are sealed, requiring specific login access.

As the notice says: "In response to recent disclosures of wide-spread breaches of both private sector and government computer systems, federal courts are immediately adding new security procedures to protect highly sensitive documents filed with the courts."

It's a sign of just how deeply the hackers, who tampered with SolarWinds' Orion suite, managed to penetrate US networks that the court system has taken on a massive additional burden - something that is almost certain to slow the progress of a significant number of cases.

It is not thought however that access was gained to the most sensitive US court - the secretive FISA aka Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court - which runs its own system that is not connected to other networks.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2021/02/01/us_court_papers/