The Los Angeles County Superior Court, the largest in the United States, suffered a ransomware attack that forced it to shut down its entire operation for a day.
A statement posted on the court's website said all 36 court locations, as well as external systems such as the MyJuryDuty Portal, were shut down while its IT teams worked to remove the ransomware from the system and restore the infrastructure.
“As many of the Court's network systems remained inaccessible as of Sunday evening, the Court will close tomorrow to allow an additional day to bring essential networks back online,” according to an initial update.
There are no links to CrowdStrike
A later update added that operations will resume, but setbacks should be expected:
“As a result of the tireless work of court staff and security experts, the Court will reopen all 36 courthouses on July 23. Court users should expect delays and potential impacts due to limits on functionality,” the update reads.
The attack was first detected in the early hours of Friday, July 19, the court said. It added that the attack was not related to the CrowdStrike update fiasco and that there was no evidence of any data breach.
Whether this will change in the future remains to be seen. At the time of publication, no ransomware operator or its affiliates claimed responsibility for the attack. However, most ransomware groups today run double-extortion campaigns, which involve exfiltrating sensitive data from compromised systems and then threatening to publish the data online unless a payment is made. That makes it highly unlikely that sensitive data will not be compromised.
The Los Angeles Superior Court is the largest trial court in the United States, Computer beeping reports, with more than 4,800 employees and 41 court facilities in 26 cities throughout Los Angeles County.
Through Computer beeping
