BAE Systems / US Bankruptcy Noticing Center outage — no data extracted, service restored after 2+ weeks
Severity: medium · Patch status: no-fix-needed · Since 2026-10-29
BAE Systems, which operates the federal judiciary's Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC) under contract with the Administrative Office of the US Courts, restored the service on October 26 after it stopped processing bankruptcy notices around October 9 due to an undisclosed incident. BAE states no data was extracted and no PII was breached, and that no other systems were affected, but has not disclosed the cause or confirmed whether it was a cyberattack. No ransomware or cybercrime group has claimed responsibility. The outage disrupted notice delivery for all US federal bankruptcy courts; the Judicial Conference declared a 'Bankruptcy Rules emergency' on October 22, allowing judges to extend deadlines and pause time periods. The BNC began clearing the backlog of delayed notices oldest-first after restoration.
What to do
- If your organisation files or depends on bankruptcy notices, verify notices you expected during Oct 9–26 were delivered and re-file/resend any missing ones
- Use any extended deadlines or relief orders issued under the Bankruptcy Rules emergency for filings affected by the outage
- Monitor AOUSC and BAE communications for the root-cause determination and any follow-on security guidance
- Review contingency procedures for court-notice delivery outages in case of recurrence
Sources
All live incidents on Threat Watch
