Cybersecurity incident at BAE Systems disrupts US bankruptcy court system

The outage has stopped official bankruptcy notices nationwide since Oct. 9, with no cause or restoration date announced.

A cybersecurity incident at BAE Systems has halted the production and delivery of bankruptcy notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the United States, disrupting a core administrative function of the judiciary with no announced date for restoration.

The Bankruptcy Noticing Center, known as the BNC, produces and transmits notices in bankruptcy cases nationwide. BAE Systems, a defense contractor, operates the center’s systems and websites on behalf of the federal judiciary. In a statement published Thursday, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said the incident affected BAE’s information technology and the websites supporting the center’s operations. 

The office said BAE is investigating and working to restore operations. CyberScoop has reached out to BAE Systems for further comment. 

The disruption has taken the center’s websites offline, including bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov and notices.uscourts.gov, along with the National Creditor Registration Service. It has stopped the production and distribution of notices, paper and electronic, since Oct. 9. 

As of Friday, those websites were still offline. 

Notices of the incident first started this week when a note was posted Tuesday on the U.S. Bankruptcy court website, calling it a “nationwide service interruption” with no mention of cyberactivity. The Administrative Office’s Oct. 15 statement was the first to use the words cybersecurity incident. 

Neither announcement identified a cause, said whether information was accessed, or gave an estimate for restoration.

Clerk of Court Joe Falzone said in the announcement that courts are still taking new filings, opening cases and processing paperwork. People who need to serve documents can look up creditor and party addresses by running searches in the courts’ electronic filing system, then compare the two lists to make sure nothing is missing. But the notice warned that those lists might not include addresses that people registered through the BNC’s Electronic Bankruptcy Noticing program or the National Creditor Registration Service. Some people who are supposed to receive notice might not appear in the records.

The incident would mark the second in as many years to affect U.S. Courts. In 2025, there was a major breach of the federal judiciary’s electronic case filing system. 

The Administrative Office said it has been in communication with the affected courts as BAE Systems continues its investigation. 

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