Wyden calls for review of US court systems’ cyber posture after case system hack
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., speaks during a news conference in the U.S. Capitol on rising prices on Thursday, July 31, 2025. Wyden sent a letter to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts Aug. 25 calling for better cybersecurity measures for U.S. court systems. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Since the incident, several district courts have instructed filers not to submit sealed documents, amid risks that the systems protecting them may not be secure.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts Monday asking him to launch an investigation into the cybersecurity posture of the nation’s court systems after a hack of its cornerstone electronic legal case management system was reported earlier this month.
The breach, which was first reported by Politico, potentially revealed the identities of confidential informants involved in criminal cases in several federal district courts. Russian hackers are believed to have been at least partly involved in the intrusion, echoing a similar 2020 hack of court systems.
“The federal judiciary’s current approach to information technology is a severe threat to our national security,” Wyden wrote. “Yet, you continue to refuse to require the federal courts to meet mandatory cybersecurity requirements and allow them to routinely ignore basic cybersecurity best practices.”
Wyden, a senior member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked the high court to commission the National Academy of Sciences to review the latest incident and the 2020 hack.
“These serious problems in the judiciary’s approach to cybersecurity have been able to fester for decades because the judiciary covers up its own negligence, has no inspector general and repeatedly stonewalls congressional oversight. This status quo cannot continue,” he wrote.
A spokesperson for the Supreme Court did not immediately return a request for comment.
Court systems are appealing targets for nation-state hackers and cybercriminals because they house sensitive legal records, classified filings and personal data that can be exploited for intelligence or extortion. Latin American cartels may have accessed sensitive legal data as a result of the hack, Politico also reported. Disrupting court operations could potentially delay proceedings or provide legal or strategic advantages to foreign adversaries.
Many courts also operate on outdated or under-resourced IT infrastructure. The front-end access tool for the affected case filing management system, known as PACER, began as a dial-up service in the late 1980s and transitioned to a full internet-facing platform throughout the 90s.
Only in May did the U.S. court system’s administrative office say it would begin implementing multifactor authentication on PACER access systems. Since the recent hacking incident, multiple district courts have directed filers to not file sealed documents, amid risks that security measures around such documents — which are normally inaccessible for public download — could be broken.
Court of Appeals Judge Michael Y. Scudder, who chairs the Judicial Conference’s IT Committee, warned last September of cybersecurity threats to the Judiciary and outlined steps being taken to address them. In June, he told a House Judiciary subcommittee that the branch is continuing efforts to modernize its IT systems as more advanced cyber threats mount.