Ransomware forces closure of Los Angeles County courthouses
All 36 courthouses in Los Angeles County closed on Monday to recover from a Friday ransomware attack that affected the county’s court case management systems, including its My Jury Duty Portal and its main website, according to a press release Los Angeles County Superior Court issued Sunday.
In response to the cyberattack, the court shut down its computer network and it remained down throughout the weekend. The county said the cyberattack was unrelated to the massive IT outage last week caused by a buggy CrowdStrike software update that’s disrupted airlines, banks, hospitals and government agencies around the globe.
“The Court experienced an unprecedented cyber-attack on Friday which has resulted in the need to shut down nearly all network systems in order to contain the damage, protect the integrity and confidentiality of information and ensure future network stability and security,” Presiding Judge Samantha Jessner said in a statement.
Los Angeles County Superior Court, the largest unified superior court in the United States, with 36 courthouses serving roughly 10 million residents, is the latest victim of ransomware attacks targeting the judicial system.
The Kansas Office of Judicial Administration in May announced it had detected “unauthorized access” to files stored on its network from an October cyberattack, exposing the data of more than 150,000 people who had interacted with the Kansas state court system.
In February, the Pennsylvania state courts website suffered a distributed denial-of-service attack that disrupted computer systems, including online docket sheets and an electronic case document filing portal.
Los Angeles County Superior Court said it does not anticipate staying closed beyond Monday. Most of the court’s network remained inaccessible on Monday.
“The Court continues to work diligently to restore systems that were severely impacted by Friday’s ransomware attack, and the Court remains confident it will resume operations on Tuesday, July 23,” a representative told StateScoop in an emailed statement.
