Bankruptcy notices meant for creditors and other parties across the entire federal court system have gone undelivered since Oct. 9, after a cybersecurity incident disrupted the contractor that runs the system behind the scenes. Paper and electronic notices simply stopped going out, and several websites tied to the process remain offline a week later.
The disruption traces back to BAE Systems IT, a division of the British defense contractor BAE Systems that operates the Bankruptcy Noticing Center's systems and websites on behalf of the federal judiciary, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The Bankruptcy Noticing Center produces and transmits bankruptcy notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the country, and the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said several supporting online services went offline following the incident involving the contractor.
As reported by CyberScoop, the incident halted the production and delivery of bankruptcy notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the United States, and the affected websites remained offline as of Friday. The outage has interrupted bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov, notices.uscourts.gov and the National Creditor Registration Service, a disruption that one federal bankruptcy court notice confirmed affected delivery of electronic and paper notices nationwide, according to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Conflicting Accounts of What Happened
Accounts of the incident diverge depending on who is describing it. The Record characterized the episode as a cyberattack on BAE Systems that disrupted the Bankruptcy Noticing Center, as reported by The Record. BAE Systems itself offered a narrower characterization, saying it was aware of a security incident that is isolated to the BNC system and that it had taken immediate steps to address it, per a company spokesperson quoted in the same report.
Per the Star-Telegram, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said BAE Systems was actively investigating the incident and working to restore operations, while a BAE Systems spokesperson said the company is coordinating closely with the courts on the response, though the company has not detailed what caused the breach. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts has likewise declined to say whether any information was accessed, and did not respond to requests for further details about the nature of the incident or whether data was stolen, according to The Record's reporting.
Courts Still Open, But Notice Gaps Loom
Despite the outage, bankruptcy courts have kept functioning day to day. Courts are still taking new filings, opening cases and processing paperwork, the station's report on the incident notes, and a separate court notice confirms that standard procedures for accepting filings and processing documents continue uninterrupted, according to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of Oklahoma.
The practical risk sits with notice delivery rather than case processing. Some people who are supposed to receive notice might not appear in the records, meaning registered creditors and other parties could be missed when documents are served, per the same account from CyberScoop. Neither the Administrative Office nor BAE Systems has identified a cause, said whether information was accessed, or given an estimate for when service will be restored, the outlet reported.
A Pattern of Federal Court Cyber Trouble
This is not the first time the federal judiciary's digital infrastructure has come under strain. The federal courts' docketing system was also attacked by hackers in early 2020, and in 2025 there was a major breach of the federal judiciary's electronic case filing system, both noted in reporting from The Record and CyberScoop, respectively. Separately, Arizona's state court system was breached weeks before this incident, exposing information belonging to more than 1.3 million people, The Record reported.
It was not until Oct. 15 that the Administrative Office's public statement first used the words cybersecurity incident to describe what had been happening since the prior Friday, according to CyberScoop. Until then, neither announcement from the court system had identified a cause, confirmed whether data was accessed, or offered any restoration timeline, leaving creditors, debtors and attorneys watching the affected websites for updates that, as of Friday, had not come.
