Cyberattacks on US Courts System Affect High-Stakes Litigators, White-Collar Criminal Clients

With the recent hacking of the US courts’ electronic filing system, a number of courthouses across the country are implementing new filing restrictions to mitigate the risks and impacts of the attacks. McCarter & English partner Scott Christie spoke with The National Law Journal and said sensitive data leaked by the cyberattack could include confidential business information like product launches or potential mergers and acquisitions. “It’s not necessarily just hackers who are targeting government databases to see what they can find,” Scott said. “I would expect that there may well be some targeted efforts, perhaps by business competitors or nation-state actors, to go after specific information that they believe has been filed by specific companies—whether it is because it’s perceived that this has a lot of monetary value or will provide the initiator of the hacking incident a competitive advantage.”