Sometime in late spring or early summer 2025, specific date unknown, a “sophisticated and persistent” cyberattack was perpetrated against the U.S. courts e-filing system. As John Sakellariadis and Josh Gerstein reported for Politico, “nation-state actors” and other cyber criminals are the suspected culprits.
The electronic case filing system used by the federal judiciary has been breached in a sweeping cyber intrusion that is believed to have exposed sensitive court data across multiple U.S. states, according to two people with knowledge of the incident. The hack, which has not been previously reported, is feared to have compromised the identities of confidential informants involved in criminal cases at multiple federal district courts, said the two people, both of whom were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the hack.
John Sakellariadis and Josh Gerstein for Politico
The hack, as the Politico piece further elucidates, hit core assets inside the court system that hold sensitive, nonpublic information.
It is not immediately clear how the hackers got in, but the incident is known to affect the judiciary’s federal core case management system, which includes two overlapping components: Case Management/Electronic Case Files, or CM/ECF, which legal professionals use to upload and manage case documents; and PACER, a system that gives the public limited access to the same data. In addition to records on witnesses and defendants cooperating with law enforcement, the filing system includes other sensitive information potentially of interest to foreign hackers or criminals, such as sealed indictments detailing non-public information about alleged crimes, and arrests and search warrants that criminal suspects could use to evade capture.
John Sakellariadis and Josh Gerstein for Politico
In a later report, also from Politico‘s John Sakellariadis and Josh Gerstein, transnational-drug cartels are suspected as likely responsible.
Officials fear that Latin American drug cartels are among those who obtained sensitive court data due to a sweeping breach of the federal judiciary’s case filing system, raising concerns that the groups will now be able to target cooperating witnesses involved in criminal trials against them. The worry, according to three judicial officials and investigators with knowledge of the hack, is that cartels could weaponize the stolen data to identify witnesses in cases the federal government has opened against them, or to gain knowledge of impending or ongoing criminal investigations, such as sealed wiretap orders and arrest and search warrants.
John Sakellariadis and Josh Gerstein for Politico
The intrusions are particularly awkward for Donald Trump, given his bragadoccio around getting tough on transnational cartels and pardon of drug-smuggler and former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.
