The U.S. federal judiciary’s electronic filing and case management system suffered an “apparent compromise” during the hack of SolarWinds Orion products, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said Wednesday (article available here).
The federal courts are working with the Department of Homeland Security on an audit of the system, according to a memo distributed to federal courts. The federal courts “suspended all national and local use” of the Orion IT tool after the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive about the breach in December, according to the AO statement.
Going forward “highly sensitive documents” will have to be submitted to the courts on paper or on a secure electronic device. Each court will make its own determination about which documents are highly sensitive.
The intrusions are part of a massive cyber-attack that utilized malicious code implanted in Orion software by Texas-based SolarWinds Corp., which is widely used in government and the private sector for network management. The hack is suspected to have been carried out by Russia, according to U.S. intelligence agencies.