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Federal judiciary touts cybersecurity work in wake of latest major breach

Federal courts are upgrading their cybersecurity on a number of fronts, but multifactor authentication for the system that gives the public access to court data poses β€œunique challenges,” the Administrative Office of the United States Courts told Sen. Ron Wyden in a letter this week.

Wyden, D-Ore., wrote a scathing August letter to the Supreme Court in response to the latest major breach of the federal judiciary’s electronic case filing system. The director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts responded on behalf of the Supreme Court.

It is β€œsimply not the case” that the courts have, in the words of Wyden, β€œignored” advice from experts on securing the Case Management/Electronic Case Files (CM/ECF) system, wrote Robert Conrad Jr., director of the office.

β€œSubstantial planning for the modernization effort began in 2022, and we are now approaching the development and implementation phase of the project,” he wrote in the Sept. 30 letter. β€œWe expect implementation will begin in the next two years in a modular and iterative manner.”

In recent years, the office has been testing technical components on its modernization effort, and is centralizing the operation of data standards to enable security, Conrad said.

Wyden took the office to task for not enabling phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA). Conrad wrote that the office was in the process of rolling out MFA to the 5 million users of PACER, the public case data system.

β€œThe Judiciary has unique challenges in implementing MFA due to the significant diversity of users,” he responded. β€œPACER users range from sophisticated, high-volume data aggregators and well-resourced law firms to journalists and ordinary citizens, to indigent litigants. All PACER users need access to court records, but some do not have traditional forms of MFA they can use. The design and implementation of our MFA implementation requires consideration of these unique needs.”

Wyden also took issue with the lack of public explanations about the series of court breaches. Conrad wrote that the breaches are β€œsensitive from both a law enforcement and national security perspective,” and need to be kept confidential, but noted that the courts have briefed congressional Judiciary, Appropriations and Intelligence committees on a classified basis.

β€œEven after back-to-back catastrophic hacks of the federal court system, Chief Justice [John Roberts] continues to stonewall Congress and cover up the judiciary’s gross negligence that has enabled these hacks,” Wyden said in response to the Conrad letter. β€œIt is long past time for the courts to follow the same minimum cybersecurity standards as the executive branch, but since Chief Justice Roberts and the Judicial Conference refuse to set such requirements, Congress must step in and legislate.”

Court Watch was the first to report on the contents of the letter.

The post Federal judiciary touts cybersecurity work in wake of latest major breach appeared first on CyberScoop.

Red Hat confirms breach of GitLab instance, which stored company’s consulting data

Red Hat on Thursday confirmed an attacker gained access to and stole data from a GitLab instance used by its consulting team, exposing some customer data. The open-source software company, a subsidiary of IBM, said the breach is contained and an investigation into the attack is underway.Β 

β€œUpon detection, we promptly launched a thorough investigation, removed the unauthorized party’s access, isolated the instance, and contacted the appropriate authorities,” Red Hat said in a security update. β€œOur investigation, which is ongoing, found that an unauthorized third party had accessed and copied some data from this instance.”

Red Hat said the compromised GitLab instance contained work related to consulting engagements with some customers, including project specifications, example code snippets and internal communications about the consulting services.Β 

β€œThis GitLab instance typically does not house sensitive personal data,” Red Hat said. β€œWhile our analysis remains ongoing, we have not identified sensitive personal data within the impacted data at this time.”

GitLab underscored that the incident involves a self-managed instance of its free GitLab Community Edition. β€œThere has been no breach of GitLab’s managed systems or infrastructure. GitLab remains secure and unaffected,” a GitLab spokesperson said in a statement.

β€œCustomers who deploy free, self-managed instances on their own infrastructure are responsible for securing their instances, including applying security patches, configuring access controls, and maintenance,” the spokesperson added.

A cybercrime group calling itself Crimson Collective claimed responsibility for the attack and said it stole more than 28,000 repositories from Red Hat’s GitLab instance. The threat group published a directory tree on Telegram listing the names of hundreds of companies it claims were impacted by the attack.Β 

The Centre for Cybersecurity Belgium published a warning Thursday, describing the breach as a high risk that potentially exposed sensitive information including credentials, tokens and network configuration data shared with Red Hat’s consulting team.Β 

β€œWe have no reason to believe the security issue impacts any of our other Red Hat services or products and are highly confident in the integrity of our software supply chain,” a spokesperson said in a statement.Β 

The company said potential exposure is limited to Red Hat Consulting customers, adding that those who are impacted will be notified directly.

β€œRed Hat takes the security and integrity of our systems and the data entrusted to us extremely seriously, and we are addressing this issue with the highest priority,” the company said.

Red Hat did not say when it detected the intrusion, but said additional hardening measures have been implemented to prevent further access.

Update: 10/3/2025, 10:13 a.m.: This story was updated to include comments from GitLab.

The post Red Hat confirms breach of GitLab instance, which stored company’s consulting data appeared first on CyberScoop.

British Department Store Harrods Warns Customers That Some Personal Details Taken in Data Breach

Four people were arrested in July on suspicion of their involvement in cyberattacks against Harrods and two other leading British retail chains, Marks & Spencer and the Co-op and Harrods.

The post British Department Store Harrods Warns Customers That Some Personal Details Taken in Data Breach appeared first on SecurityWeek.

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