Russia appears to be responsible for recently hacking US computers holding federal court documents.
The highly sensitive records that were breached could hold details on people charged with national security crimes, multiple sources told The New York Times on Tuesday.
It is not clear if Russian intelligence or other nations were involved, or the specific organization.
Documents may have been viewed on mid-level criminal cases in the greater New York City area and a few other jurisdictions. People with Russian and Eastern European surnames were in some of the cases.
Court system administrators recently told the Justice Department and federal court staff that persistent and sophisticated cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records, states an internal department memo obtained by the newspaper.
This remains an URGENT MATTER that requires immediate action.
The breach happened around last month, when district court chief justices across the nation were told to move criminal cases with overseas connections in eight or more districts off of the regular system.
Then on Friday, Margo Brodie, the chief justice of the Eastern District of New York, issued an order barring sealed documents from being uploaded to the public database PACER.
The hackers infiltrated the systems in Arkansas, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and South Dakota, an anonymous official told The Times.
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The report comes three days before US President Donald Trump is set to meet his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Alaska, to discuss and end to the war with Ukraine.
The court system was first hacked more than four years ago. Russia was not named in a cyberattack that was announced in 2021.
The report comes more than six months after Chinese hackers accessed multiple Treasury Department unclassified documents and workstations after clearing a third-arty software security provider. The Treasury Department did not say what type of files were breached, but said the hackers were shut out.
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