Every federal bankruptcy court in the United States has lost access to the system it uses to send out bankruptcy notices. A BAE Systems cyberattack has disrupted the Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC), the platform that produces and transmits notices for all federal bankruptcy courts across the country.
The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts confirmed the incident in a statement on Thursday afternoon. BAE Systems, a British multinational, operates BNC systems and websites on behalf of the Federal Judiciary. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which typically handles cyberattacks on federal agencies, referred questions to the U.S. Courts.
What the BAE Systems Cyberattack Has Taken Offline
According to the U.S. Courts, BAE Systems IT and websites that support BNC operations have been impacted by a cybersecurity incident. As a result, all access to the BNC systems and websites that BAE operates for the judiciary is currently unavailable. That includes:
- bnc.uscourts.gov
- bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov
- notices.uscourts.gov
- the National Creditor Registration Service
The incident has also halted the BNC’s production and distribution of bankruptcy notices for the courts.
The Administrative Office said it has been in contact with the affected courts and is coordinating with BAE Systems. BAE is investigating the incident and working to restore operations. No timeline for recovery has been shared, and the nature of the attack has not been disclosed.
A Government Contractor Target, Again
The BNC disruption is the latest in a series of incidents where an attack on a government contractor or third-party vendor has spilled over into public services.
Last week, a contact center for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), a Department of Transportation safety agency, was temporarily taken offline after a government contractor was targeted by a cyberattack, according to two people with knowledge of the situation who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.
The contact center is run by support provider Senture. The FMCSA first reported technical difficulties on social media on October 6. It remains unclear when that attack began or whether it is ongoing.
Courts Have Been Hit Through Vendors Before
In September 2026, the Kentucky Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) confirmed that Kentucky Appellate Court data was compromised in a breach traced to a third-party vendor.
West Publishing Corporation, operating as Thomson Reuters Court Management Solutions (Thomson Reuters CMS), told the AOC that the incident originated in file systems tied to its C-Track case management platform. C-Track is used by the Kentucky Supreme Court and the Kentucky Court of Appeals to manage case records.
According to Thomson Reuters CMS, an unauthorized third party accessed and obtained court data from C-Track systems across several states, not just Kentucky. In Kentucky’s case, exposure was limited to appellate court data stored within the C-Track infrastructure.
Trial-level records that were never part of an appeal were not affected, since Kentucky does not use third-party vendors for trial court e-filing. The AOC said its appellate courts continued to operate normally throughout the incident.
Why the BAE Systems Cyberattack Matters
Taken together, the three incidents show a common thread. Courts and federal agencies increasingly depend on outside contractors to run critical systems, and when those contractors are hit, the impact lands directly on public services.
In the BNC case, a single compromised contractor has stopped a core function for every federal bankruptcy court at once. How quickly BAE Systems can restore the platform, and whether any data was accessed, remain the key open questions.
