California court suffering from tech outages after cyberattack

The San Joaquin County Superior Court said nearly all of its digital services have been knocked offline due to a cyberattack that began earlier this week. 

The court first warned the county’s nearly 800,000 residents of technology issues on Wednesday before admitting that it was a cybersecurity incident on Thursday. 

The attack knocked out all of the court’s phone and fax services, websites containing juror reporting instructions, the e-filing platform, credit card payment processing and more. Some jurors scheduled for this week were excused. 

“Since our last update, San Joaquin County Superior Court has been working diligently to investigate connectivity issues that have impacted some of our systems. We have determined these issues to be the result of a cybersecurity incident,” the court said.

“We took immediate and proactive steps to contain the event, which included isolating our systems from the internet. As a result, part of our network remains offline.”

Cybersecurity experts have been hired to support the court’s efforts to remediate the issue and investigate the incident. 

The court does not have a timeline for when systems will be restored. No hacking group or ransomware operation has taken credit for the incident. 

The attack comes just months after the Los Angeles County Superior Court system was hit with a ransomware attack that caused identical issues for weeks. The city of Modesto, just 30 minutes south of San Joaquin County, dealt with its own ransomware attack last year as well. 

Government bodies across California continue to face an unprecedented wave of cyberattacks affecting city, county and state-level services. On Thursday, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles confirmed it is facing its second major cyberattack in the last two years.