BAE Systems says no data was extracted and no PII was breached in the incident that disrupted US bankruptcy court notices for weeks.

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The Trump administration is breaking the law after being more than a month overdue on declassifying a court opinion on the surveillance of U.S. citizens, according to two senators and a coalition of civil liberties groups.

Release of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinion has been closely tied to reauthorizing Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which lapsed this summer, although collection authority has continued under another court ruling that runs through March of next year.

Under Section 702, the government can warrantlessly search foreign targets’ electronic and phone communications using the personal information of Americans who have been in contact with them.

In the FISC opinion that the administration has not declassified, a judge objected to tools the government has created to let analysts process messages. The objection reportedly was over a filtering system that allowed analysts to get information in a way that should be counted as a query of Americans’ information, which is subject to extra protections.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who co-authored a letter to administration officials Monday with Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., had previously said the opinion shows “major compliance problems” and had  objected to a short-term reauthorization of Section 702 until officials agreed to release it.

“As Congress continues to debate the fate of this authority, lawmakers must be able to discuss these abuses openly,” Wyden and Schiff wrote to Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton and Attorney General Todd Blanche. “Otherwise, the American people will rightly question whether a government that so flagrantly violates basic legal requirements, like the statute requiring declassification, can ever be trusted to not abuse a powerful surveillance tool like Section 702.”

The Senate duo and the coalition of civil liberties groups in a separate letter to congressional leaders said that under the law, the letter was due Sept. 13. Blanche had previously committed to declassify the letter to lawmakers by the statutory deadline. The letter was also overdue by another measurement, with the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee saying that they expected the declassification and release by May 15.

A spokesperson for Senate Intelligence Chairman Tom Cotton, R-Ark., didn’t respond to a request for comment, but the office of the leader of the Democratic side of the panel, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, did.

“The Vice Chairman has been clear that he supports transparency with regard to Section 702 of FISA,” a spokesperson, Rachel Cohen, said in a statement to CyberScoop. “This is precisely why he and Chairman Cotton urged then-DNI [Tulsi] Gabbard in March to declassify the March 17 FISC opinion. Unfortunately, neither Director Gabbard nor Acting Director [Bill] Pulte were responsive, but Senator Warner expects that DNI Clayton will declassify the opinion, consistent with the bipartisan SSCI letter and as required by law.”

Failure to declassify the opinion should be fatal to reauthorizing the expired surveillance law, the civil liberties groups wrote.

“Congress should refuse to support any reauthorization of Section 702 while the administration actively withholds legally mandated information about how the surveillance program operates,” they wrote. “Further, it must stop relying on executive branch self-policing to protect Americans’ rights and reauthorize Section 702 only with a warrant requirement to access Americans’ private communications.”

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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A cybersecurity incident at BAE Systems has halted the production and delivery of bankruptcy notices for every federal bankruptcy court in the United States, disrupting a core administrative function of the judiciary with no announced date for restoration.

The Bankruptcy Noticing Center, known as the BNC, produces and transmits notices in bankruptcy cases nationwide. BAE Systems, a defense contractor, operates the center’s systems and websites on behalf of the federal judiciary. In a statement published Thursday, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts said the incident affected BAE’s information technology and the websites supporting the center’s operations. 

The office said BAE is investigating and working to restore operations.

 “We are aware of a security incident that is isolated to the BNC system and have taken immediate steps to address it,” a BAE Systems spokesperson told CyberScoop. “No other systems have been affected.” 

The disruption has taken the center’s websites offline, including bnc.uscourts.gov, bankruptcynotices.uscourts.gov and notices.uscourts.gov, along with the National Creditor Registration Service. It has stopped the production and distribution of notices, paper and electronic, since Oct. 9. 

As of Friday, those websites were still offline. 

Notices of the incident first started this week when a note was posted Tuesday on the U.S. Bankruptcy court website, calling it a “nationwide service interruption” with no mention of cyberactivity. The Administrative Office’s Oct. 15 statement was the first to use the words cybersecurity incident. 

Neither announcement identified a cause, said whether information was accessed, or gave an estimate for restoration.

Clerk of Court Joe Falzone said in the announcement that courts are still taking new filings, opening cases and processing paperwork. People who need to serve documents can look up creditor and party addresses by running searches in the courts’ electronic filing system, then compare the two lists to make sure nothing is missing. But the notice warned that those lists might not include addresses that people registered through the BNC’s Electronic Bankruptcy Noticing program or the National Creditor Registration Service. Some people who are supposed to receive notice might not appear in the records.

The incident would mark the second in as many years to affect U.S. Courts. In 2025, there was a major breach of the federal judiciary’s electronic case filing system. 

The Administrative Office said it has been in communication with the affected courts as BAE Systems continues its investigation. 

UPDATE, 10/16/2026, 1:45 p.m.: This story has been updated with comment from BAE Systems.

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The Justice Department and FBI announced that they had seized two hacking tools connected to the Chinese government-linked group Flax Typhoon and a China-based company that the U.S. government has repeatedly taken action against, including with a new multi-agency advisory Thursday.

The domain name seizures were meant to deny hackers access to the vulnerability scanning tool Microscan and the spearphishing tool FishHub created by the Chinese firm Integrity Technology Group, which the United States sanctioned last year. The U.S. government in 2024 also made the company the focus of a takedown operation, saying it was behind a massive botnet.

Authorities were granted the court-authorized seizures in the Western District of Pennsylvania, the FBI and DOJ announced Thursday in unsealing documents in the case.

U.S. agencies paired the announcement of the seizures with an advisory from the FBI, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and National Security Agency.

“Chinese government-linked cyber threat actors, enabled by the Integrity Technology Group, are combining automated scanning tools, large-scale botnets, and hands-on exploitation techniques to target and steal sensitive data from organizations worldwide, including U.S. critical infrastructure sectors,” the advisory reads. “These actors exploit vulnerabilities by using scanning tools, cross-site scripting attacks, and password spraying on Microsoft Exchange servers, while establishing persistence through VPN software and exfiltrating emails and credentials using scripts.”

Similar to previous allegations, law enforcement said Integrity Tech leaned on a Mirai-variant botnet of internet-of-things devices, in this case to facilitate Microscan.

Microscan targets have included a South Carolina power company, airports in Japan and Poland, critical infrastructure companies and universities in Taiwan and others, according to the FBI and DOJ. Victims of FishHub, which downloads malware on their networks after gaining access through spearphishing, include Taiwanese universities.

“Chinese government-affiliated actors continue to position themselves within critical infrastructure networks, including operational technology (OT) systems, with the aim of disrupting critical functions at a future time of their choosing,” said Chris Butera, acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA. 

“Under the FBI Cyber Strategy, we pursue both the actors who threaten critical infrastructure and the enterprises that support them,” said Brett Leatherman, head of the FBI’s Cyber Division. “Integrity Technology Group, a China-based company with ties to the Chinese government, is one of those enterprises, acquiring or developing cyber tools and hosting infrastructure for actors targeting networks worldwide.”

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Law enforcement has arrested two leaders of a Russian-owned phone hacking company used by Kremlin agencies who allegedly masked its foreign ownership from the U.S. Defense Department, Department of Homeland Security and others to win millions of dollars worth of contracts, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Lee Reiber of Boise, Idaho, the CEO of Oxygen Forensics (Oxygen US), was arrested in his home state and Oleg Davydov, one of five Russian nationals whom DOJ said actually controlled the company, was arrested in London, from where the department plans to seek his extradition. They face charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

Publicly, Oxygen went to great lengths to present Reiber as the true leader of a company based in Alexandria, Va., asserting that the company was not controlled by Russian-based executives, according to a criminal complaint., While the company told government agencies it was U.S.-owned, Russian officials with the company repeatedly overruled him, the complaint alleges. 

Oxygen’s business aims were complicated in 2022 after the United States expanded sanctions against Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. That’s when the company installed Reiber as CEO and removed the owners from public corporate filings. An unnamed co-conspirator in the complaint nonetheless said that “fateful decisions will be made by” five shareholders, including Davydov. 

Since March 2022, Oxygen has sold its forensics software to the U.S. Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations, the DHS inspector general and DOD. After the 2022 sanctions, Oxygen won more than $2 million in contracts and purchases from the Secret Service and its National Computer Forensics Institute. Reiber asserted U.S. ownership as recently as February of this year to the NCFI, according to the complaint.

Reiber knew the company had to conceal its true ownership, the complaint states. Oxygen and its competitors have quarreled in the media and in courts. Oxygen in 2023 faced accusations that Oxygen US and Oxygen Russia were both using software code reverse-engineered from Elcomsoft’s products. Oxygen Russia’s customers included the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). 

“The accusation mattered to Reiber because answering it truthfully would have required disclosing that Oxygen US and Oxygen Russia sold the same software, developed by the same team, and were owned by the same people,” the complaint reads, citing email correspondence.

Knowing Oxygen’s actual ownership configuration would’ve changed the equation for the government agencies, according to the complaint.

“Procurement officials at the U.S. government customers have represented that they would not have awarded or renewed contracts for the forensic software had they known that OxygenUS was a Russian-owned company,” the complaint reads.

Natalia Krapiva, senior tech-legal counsel at Access Now, celebrated what she nonetheless called an overdue move from DOJ.

“For years, civil society warned that Oxygen Forensics was owned and built from Russia. Now the Justice Department confirmed it,” Krapiva told CyberScoop. “We applaud the U.S. government for taking this crucial step, but the fact that it took so long is both a national security and a human rights scandal.”

“The same technology that extracted data for U.S. investigations has been used inside Russia to jail journalists, activists, and peaceful dissenters. And it doesn’t stop at the U.S. border,” she continued. “We call on the U.S. and over 100 governments using this technology to immediately sever all ties to the company, implement sanctions, and conduct full investigation(s) of how Russian tech designed for the FSB spent all these years inside their sensitive law enforcement operations.”

Court-listed attorneys for Reiber listed in court documents didn’t respond to requests for comment. No attorney for Davydov could be located.

The DOJ in its announcement specified that “The complaint does not allege that the software contained malicious code or that it was used to gain unauthorized access to any customer’s computer systems or data.”

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Colorado police arrested a man last week over charges that he impersonated both Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and head of the National Security Agency’s famed Tailored Access Operations hacking unit.

Joshua Culver, also known as “Maverick Young,” appeared in a Colorado court Tuesday after his arrest stemming from an indictment in Indiana in July on four counts of falsely impersonating an officer of the court and one count of using a forged signature of a judge.

Culver allegedly pretended to be an officer of the NSA in September of last year and said in that capacity he “could take adverse action” against the Tippecanoe County sheriff’s office in Lafayette, Ind. if it didn’t provide him information he sought, including the location of his biological daughter.

He also allegedly pretended to be an NSA officer again that month, then produced a document purportedly from the head of the Tailored Access Operations (TAO) elite hacking unit in February to the Clerk of the Lake County, Ind. Superior Court.

“The document, which purported to bear official letterhead, falsely stated that it was a directive issued by the ‘Director of TAO’ and that Culver was a ‘federal asset’ active in multiple investigations,” the indictment reads. “The document commanded that certain actions be taken as required by ‘federal directive,’ including that the case pending against Culver be dismissed with prejudice, that warrants be quashed, and that Lake County officials cooperate with a ‘federal audit’ of individuals identified in the document.”

TAO has gone by the name of Office of Computer Network Operations since 2017, although in July it indicated that it was resuming its old name. TAO garnered unflattering attention in 2017 after the global WannaCry ransomware outbreak used an exploit that the NSA developed.

The indictment also alleges that Culver used a forged signature of Roberts in September for an “Order of Dismissal With Prejudice” in a case against Culver in Grant County, Indiana.

A defender appointed to Culver did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

You can read the indictment below.

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Federal authorities on Tuesday unsealed an indictment against 17 Iranians affiliated with the tech firm Mabna Institute, alleging a campaign of vast cybertheft on behalf of the Iranian government against universities, governments and companies.

It’s a second wave of indictments against the Tehran-based firm, expanding on and replacing a 2018 indictment of nine of the defendants from then and adding others. 

“Today’s charges, which include eight additional defendants, reveal the broader network allegedly behind a sweeping, state-sponsored campaign to steal research and intellectual property from American universities, businesses, and government institutions,” said Jamie McDonald, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. “More than eight years after making the original indictment public, these charges make clear that the passage of time will not deter us from identifying and pursuing those who target the United States from abroad.”

Unlike in 2018, the United States is currently waging a war against Iran that recently saw a 60-day negotiation deadline pass with no progress.

“Cyber operations have become a central instrument of national power, and attacks on American and allied institutions carry direct consequences for our security and economic strength,” McDonald continued.

According to the Justice Department, Gholamreza Rafatnejad and Ehsan Mohammadi founded the Mabna Institute around 2013 with the goal of helping Iranian universities and scientific and research organizations to steal from foreign scientific efforts. In doing so, it paid hackers-for-hire listed in the indictment.

The institute has compromised more than 100,000 professors’ email accounts globally, the indictment alleges, and successfully compromised 8,000 accounts at 144 U.S. universities and 178 universities in other parts of the world.

Its hackers used stolen credentials to take academic journals, dissertations and e-books across all fields of research, at least 31.5 terabytes worth in total. The institute sometimes sold stolen data, according to the indictment. 

“Through the course of the conspiracy, U.S.-based universities spent more than approximately $3.4 billion to procure and access such data and intellectual property,” a press release on the indictment states.

The defendants also have compromised and stolen from email accounts for at least five U.S. federal and state government agencies, 42 U.S. companies and 11 foreign companies, among them HBO. 

In all, the indictment brings 14 separate, sometimes overlapping charges against the 17 defendants, with sentences for each offense ranging from two to 20 years.

In conjunction with the indictment, the State Department’s Rewards for Justice program is offering up to $10 million for information leading to the location of four of the defendants.

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