The **Bankruptcy Noticing Center (BNC)**, a critical system responsible for producing and transmitting bankruptcy notices for all federal bankruptcy courts, has been restored after a cyberattack caused significant disruption. The platform, maintained by British multinational **BAE Systems**, was offline for two weeks, prompting an emergency declaration by federal court officials. "No other systems were affected. No data was extracted. There was no breach of any PII," a spokesperson for **BAE Systems** confirmed, alleviating immediate concerns about sensitive personal information compromise. No hacking group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which was publicly announced on October 22. ## Emergency Measures and Operational Recovery The outage led to a "Bankruptcy Rules emergency" declaration, granting bankruptcy judges the flexibility to extend deadlines and issue orders to circumvent the BNC's unavailability. This declaration remains active for 90 days, through January 2027, unless rescinded earlier. "Although BNC has announced that services are beginning to resume, we anticipate that the emergency declaration will remain necessary throughout the restoration period," the court stated. "The declaration provides important flexibility to ensure that courts can address the effects of the outage and helps protect parties from potential prejudice resulting from delayed notice and related service disruptions." During the disruption, the BNC's production and distribution of bankruptcy notices ceased, and all related websites operated by BAE Systems – including bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov, and notices.uscourts.gov, along with the **National Creditor Registration Service** – were inaccessible. Federal court officials announced that the BNC will now begin processing a backlog of data dating back to October 7 and will also handle newly received court submissions. Paper notices, which were also affected, will be released in prioritized waves. To account for delays, all paper notices generated between October 13 and the restoration date will include a warning about the delayed delivery due to the cyberattack. ## A Broader Trend of Federal Breaches The attack on the BNC is not an isolated incident but rather one in a series of breaches targeting federal systems in recent months. The **Defense Department**, **FBI**, **ATF**, and **Department of Transportation** have all reported security incidents within the last three months. Most recently, hackers released stolen data purportedly belonging to 41,000 employees of the **Department of Homeland Security (DHS)**. A DHS spokesperson acknowledged the breach, stating, "We are actively working to address the situation swiftly and effectively. We take all security threats against our employees and officers seriously and will work to ensure all are properly protected." These recurring incidents underscore a pressing need for enhanced cybersecurity measures and resilience across all levels of government infrastructure, prompting IT security professionals and privacy-conscious users to remain vigilant.