A cybersecurity incident affecting BAE Systems has taken offline the systems that produce and distribute bankruptcy notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the United States, disrupting both electronic and paper service nationwide. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said on October 15 that BAE’s information technology and websites supporting the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC) had been impacted and that the contractor was investigating and working to restore operations. [1]
The outage affects bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov, notices.uscourts.gov and the National Creditor Registration Service, which supports creditor registration and address-label access for court processes. The BNC’s production and distribution of bankruptcy notices has stopped, leaving courts unable to use the contractor-operated noticing service while the investigation continues.
Court notices indicate that the disruption began on October 9. The Eastern District of Texas said the incident affected the processing and delivery of electronic and paper notices nationwide, while other courts warned that notices issued through the BNC may not have been delivered. The outage does not appear to have taken the federal bankruptcy filing system offline: courts have continued accepting filings, opening cases and processing documents, although entry and service of notices and orders may be delayed.
The operational consequences extend to time-sensitive bankruptcy proceedings. The Eastern District of Texas said it would extend by 30 days certain stay-related delays for cases filed on or after September 14, while courts elsewhere have said they will handle issues arising from the outage case by case. Electronic notices of filing generated through the courts’ CM/ECF systems have continued in at least some districts, but that service is separate from the BNC’s broader process for producing and transmitting bankruptcy notices.
Neither the judiciary nor BAE Systems has publicly identified the intrusion method, a threat actor, affected data, possible exfiltration or a restoration date. No CVE, vendor vulnerability advisory, public proof of concept or exploitation-in-the-wild report has been associated with the incident in the official notices reviewed. That means defenders have no verified technical indicator or patch guidance to apply beyond following court and vendor updates, isolating affected BNC integrations where possible and treating delayed notices as a live business-continuity issue.
BAE Systems told security reporters that it operates the BNC for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, had taken immediate steps to address a security incident isolated to the BNC system and was coordinating with the judiciary. Until service returns, bankruptcy professionals should monitor their district court’s announcements, confirm receipt of critical notices through available channels and preserve records of filing, service and deadline-related communications.
