US court data exposed in massive hack

The U.S. federal government's court case filing system has been compromised.

The identities of court informants, as well as other valuable information like arrest warrants, could have been accessed in a major hack that was reported by Politico. It's thought to have affected the government's Case Management/Electronic Case Files (or CM/ECF), which is used by those who work in law to upload legal documents. On top of that, PACER, which is a publicly accessible database with some of that same information, was also thought to be affected.

Politico also reported that chief judges from federal courts in various states attended a briefing on the hack last week in Kansas City. At this point, it's not known who perpetrated the hack, though Politico's sources suggested foreign state actors could have been responsible. According to their reporting, a separate system used to protect the identities of high-level federal court witnesses wasn't affected by this hack.

Perhaps it's time for the government to update its security protocols.