Overview
- Court IT staff discovered unusually large automated downloads Thursday and shut the judicial network down within about two hours.
- Officials say the intrusion likely began when an employee clicked a phishing email, allowing a bot or automated process to copy files from the system.
- Court leaders say tens of thousands of personal records may have been copied and one report put the total at more than 270,000 court records, with protective orders and foster-care reports among the files cited.
- The courts have emailed potentially affected people, set up a call center and FAQ, and notified domestic-violence shelters and local police while the FBI leads the active investigation.
- Exposed protective-order locations and child-welfare details could put survivors and families at risk and may prompt investigators to seek whether the data will be sold or used to cause harm.