A cyberattack on government contractor BAE Systems has knocked out the system that produces and sends notices for every US federal bankruptcy court. The Administrative Office of the US Courts disclosed the outage on October 15, and as of October 16 the services remained unavailable with no restoration date.
Bankruptcy Noticing Center Goes Dark for All Federal Bankruptcy Courts
The Administrative Office of the US Courts said in a notice that the attack on BAE Systems took the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC) offline. BAE operates the BNC for the federal judiciary, and the center produces and transmits notices on behalf of all federal bankruptcy courts. Production and distribution of those notices has stopped.
The systems listed as unavailable are bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov, notices.uscourts.gov and the National Creditor Registration Service. The Courts office said it is coordinating with the affected courts and with BAE.
BAE Describes the Incident as Isolated to the BNC System
BAE said it is aware of a security incident that is isolated to the BNC system and that it has taken immediate steps in response. The Courts office said BAE is investigating and working to restore operations. Neither organization has said what “isolated” means in practice, such as whether the BNC runs on infrastructure separate from the rest of BAE’s networks.
What Officials Have Not Disclosed About the BNC Attack
Several basic facts about the incident remain unpublished. Neither the Courts office nor BAE has described the nature of the attack, including whether it involved ransomware. They have not said when it began, whether data was accessed or stolen, or when the BNC might return to service.
Federal agencies have not filled the gaps. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on the incident, and CISA referred questions to the Courts office. Without a confirmed cause or timeline, creditors and debtors have no official indication of how long notice delivery will be disrupted.
Why Stalled Notices Matter to Creditors and Debtors
Bankruptcy notices tell creditors and debtors about hearings, filing deadlines and case outcomes. With the BNC down, courts cannot issue or send those notices nationwide, which affects creditors and debtors who depend on them for deadlines. The Courts office has not published guidance on alternatives while the outage continues.
Timeline So Far: One Notice, One Statement, No Restoration Date
The sequence of public information is short. The US Courts office published its notice on October 15, and BAE confirmed an isolated security incident the same day. By October 16 the listed services were still unavailable and no restoration date had been offered. BAE’s statement that the incident is confined to the BNC system is the only description of scope either organization has given, and it does not say how the company reached that conclusion or whether the investigation has finished.
Contractor Attacks Add to a Run of Incidents Touching Public Institutions
The BNC outage arrives in a cluster of incidents affecting government functions. Arizona’s state court system suffered a breach that leaked data on 1.3 million people. A day before the BAE disclosure, the Department of Transportation confirmed that a contact center for a safety agency went offline after a contractor was hit by a cyberattack.
The federal judiciary has also been a target directly. Its case management systems, CM/ECF and PACER, were breached last year. The BNC incident differs in that the compromised party is a private vendor running a function on the judiciary’s behalf, which places the outage in the same category as the Transportation contact center: a government service interrupted through a third party rather than through the agency’s own network.
The scope of the BNC’s role makes the outage visible well beyond the courts. A single contractor-operated system carries notice traffic for every federal bankruptcy court, so one point of failure produced a nationwide stoppage. The Courts office has said it will coordinate with courts and BAE as the investigation proceeds, and any confirmation of ransomware, data theft or a restoration timeline would come from those two organizations.
