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The LA Superior Court, one of the largest trial courts in the US, shut down all of its 36 courthouse locations earlier this week to resolve some of its compromised systems caused by a recent ransomware attack.
The ransomware, which the country has yet to attribute to any ransomware group, compromised the entire Los Angeles Superior Court network. The affected infrastructure includes both external and internal systems, as well as case management tools.
As of Sunday evening, several of the Court’s network systems were still inaccessible. According to the county’s statement, the Court will close tomorrow to allow one more day to repair and bring critical networks back online.
The ransomware on the LA Superior Court was allegedly discovered last weekend.
Investigations identified the LA Superior Court attack on Saturday when the affected office reported that the ransomware operators started as early as Friday morning, July 19. In addition, LASC stated that the event was unrelated to the ongoing global outage affecting Windows PCs due to the flawed CrowdStrike update.
After discovering the attack, LASC was forced to deactivate all network systems to isolate the breach instantly. In addition, these devices affected by the mandatory shutdown will likely be offline until they are recovered and brought back online.
Also, the Court insisted that its investigation found no evidence that any data on the breached systems had been compromised and that it is currently investigating the incident and assessing its impact with the help of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies.
According to one of the Presiding Judges within LASC, the Court was subjected to an unprecedented cyberattack, necessitating the shutdown of nearly all network systems to contain the damage, protect the integrity and confidentiality of information, and ensure future network stability and security.
Still, despite the Court’s immediate response in restoring the affected devices and systems, many critical parts of the infrastructure remained offline until Sunday evening.
The Los Angeles Superior Court is one of the most prominent trial courts in the United States and has more than 4,800 employees. It also operates 41 courthouses in 26 communities throughout Los Angeles County, servicing a population of more than 10 million. Therefore, the alleged ransomware attack had the potential to be one of the most severe threats to the legal industry in the US.
