Speaking to the Kansas Legislature during her annual State of the Judiciary address, Luckert revealed more details about the attack than the court had released since shutting down online access in early October. Luckert confirmed what experts had suspected, that the judicial branch was hit by a ransomware attack.
Kansas did not pay a ransom to the attackers, she said.
Instead, Luckert explained, staff at the Office of Judicial Administration quickly disconnected the systems to prevent the malware from infecting district courts in addition to the state. That step caused the statewide outage for electronic access systems.
Additionally, Luckert said, the court system worked with experts to investigate and resolve the issue fully.
“The emergency responders’ investigation revealed ransomware on the encrypted systems, but we had working backups and the tools and expertise of experts, making recovery of our data feasible,” Luckert said.
In November, the judicial branch announced in a press release that hackers may have accessed sensitive information. Luckert said the courts were still working to determine what information was accessed and notify those affected.
Kansas restored access to the statewide online system earlier this year but is still working on updating the online records with three months worth of paper-only court proceedings.
Luckert said the court system has implemented a variety of new protections and policies to prevent a subsequent attack. Officials have passed information along to federal law enforcement for a criminal investigation into the breach.
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